


Love and Rockets

by DisaLanglois



Series: Love and Rockets [1]
Category: Strike Back
Genre: Action/Adventure, Africa doesn't get enough love in fandom, Closeted Character, First Time, M/M, Military, Original Character(s), Slow Build, South Africa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 03:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 65,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisaLanglois/pseuds/DisaLanglois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael Stonebridge has Issues.<br/>Damien Scott has a Plan.<br/>Conrad Knox has four 80's-vintage nuclear weapons ... and now he has four short-range ballistic missiles to put them in.<br/>Section 20's job has just got more complicated than ever before.   </p>
<p>Plot, action, bromance, and a bit of slash – eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

# Prologue

## Hereford, England

It should have fucking _rained._

Should have been pouring down in sheets, with everyone standing huddled under umbrellas. Tears and rain, falling together. Black suits and black skirts under a funereal sky - but no, not today. The English weather wasn’t cooperating, as fucking usual. The sky was more blue than gray. A distant gale was blowing clots of cloud high up there, so that early dusk scooted through the incongruous late-afternoon sun over the cemetery. 

It shouldn’t be sunny. It should have rained, so that at least he couldn’t tell that Michael Stonebridge was still not crying. 

Damien Scott rocked on his heels, and then reminded himself to stop. 

He couldn’t really hear what was being said over there by the grave itself. He needed to be here, but at the same time he sure as hell wasn’t welcome in Stonebridge’s family. There were some of Kerry’s colleagues here as well, and some of the kids from her classes, and he steered clear of them too. But neither was his place over on the other side with Stonebridge’s army buddies. Sinclair had gestured him to come over when he arrived, but he’d shaken his head. 

He had no place here. He’d long since given up the right to call any place his place. He had no home to go to. 

Still, he needed to be here, even if only to see that Michael Stonebridge was still not _fucking_ crying. His broad face was like marble. His gaze was unfocused, but his neck and back were straight, and he was just not fucking crying. 

Not right, that. A guy shouldn’t _not_ cry at a time like this. Limey stiff-upper lips were all well and all, but it wasn’t normal _not_ to cry at a time like this. 

They seemed to be breaking up around the grave. 

Looked like the show was over. He knew the body language of folks politely desperate to get away from a place that was making them hurt. The awkward dance of getting away from grief back to real life, while trying not to give offence to people whose grief was deeper than theirs. Hugs, and half conversations, awkward words of wisdom, and all the time the knowledge that _they_ had families to go to. _Theirs_ wasn’t the worst loss, _they_ could escape the awful grief by going home, and having a cup of coffee, and talking about what a great person Kerry Stonebridge was, what a tragedy, let’s drink to Kerry’s memory… 

_Fuck,_ he’d been to more Brit funerals than he’d realized. Porter, and Kate, and Grant, and now Kerry Stonebridge. They were all different but in the most important way they were all the same. What the fuck could one say at a time like this, other than, _I’m sorry…_ and leave the family to it? _Nada._

The sad sacks over there were right. There wasn’t a damn thing anyone could say to Michael to make his hurting less, not a damn thing anyone could do; trying to be wise and consoling would achieve nothing, and they all knew it. 

Not that Michael Stonebridge looked as if he was registering what anyone said to him, right now. 

Scott took his sunglasses out of his pocket, and put them on. Kerry’s colleagues came walking past him in a solemn group, holding hands. One of them filled out her black pencil skirt very nicely. He let them pass by him, and then turned around for a better look. 

Yeah, real nice. Her hem nipped nicely at the back of her knees, showing coolly curved calves. The skirt had one of those little nicked seams at the back, allowing her a freer stride, but also allowing Damien Scott a nice glimpse of smooth inner knee, and a hint of thigh. Real nice. 

When he turned around to look back at the gravesite, there was a man close to him. He was walking directly for Scott, purposefully, and already too close to for him to casually turn and stroll away. Scott spread his feet under him, and took a closer look. 

He’d seen this stranger near Michael, when they came out of the church. He carried a very familiar brooding nose, and a muscular jaw that seemed wider than his head – yeah, that was Old Man Stonebridge, no question. He wore the trousers of a military man – knife-edge starch down the front centre-line of his trouser legs, always the dead giveaway for an old-school officer. He walked with a straight posture, and no sign of doddering old-fogey joints. 

He saw Scott’s prepared stance, and narrowed his blue eyes, but didn’t look away or step any smaller, just steamed straight up to him. 

“Damien Scott, I presume?” Old Man Stonebridge said, coming to a stop opposite Scott. 

“Cap’n Stonebridge.” 

The old man’s picked up his head, his jaw jutting – a tic so very like Michael’s it was as good as a paternity test. “Please take your sunglasses off when I am speaking to you. I dislike talking to my own reflection.”

Oh, yeah. Stonehenge’s dad, all right. Scott obeyed, folded his sunglasses and put them back into his pocket. “Better, Cap’n?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“I came to offer my condolences to the family.”

“I appreciate it. I’m sure Michael will be grateful as well.” 

“It’s a tragedy. Kerry was … she was a great girl. She didn’t deserve to get caught up in this mess.”

“She was murdered,” the old man said flatly. “Nobody deserves to get caught up in that mess.” 

“Yeah.”

“The police say the killer was SAS.”

“Not any more, he’s not. There’s not a man in Hereford who wouldn’t blow him away for the price of a box of matches right now.” 

Captain Stonebridge's gaze went a little distant momentarily, as if he was trying to recall if he had a box of matches handy in the car. “You sound very sure of that.” 

“I’m sure.”

“Have you any appointments this afternoon, Mr Scott?” 

“Me? Er, no.”

“I would be grateful if you would call on me, after the funeral. I want to talk to you.”

“About Kerry?”

“About Michael. You know him better than any other of his colleagues.”

“I’m not sure I’d exactly say I…”

_“I_ am sure. Michael and Kerry both told me about you. Michael in particular speaks very highly of you. You understand, I trust, that neither of us is really free to speak much about our work. So when I hear the same name cropping up in his conversations, I know that it is a name with special significance. I’d be glad for the chance to talk to someone who is close to Michael.” 

Scott nodded. He turned around and gazed down to the grave site. Michael was almost alone, standing on the other side of the grave from Kerry’s parents, gazing at the black square of ground his wife’s coffin had sunk into. Michael was still not crying. 

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked, turning back to the Captain. 

“Fire away.”

“Has he cried, at all? Tears, I mean.” 

“Not that I’ve seen. But if he has been, he would probably not show me. He and I are not … as intimate as that.” 

His own son, and they were ‘not as intimate as that.’ No wonder ol’ Stonehenge sometimes acted like he had a carrot up his ass. 

“That is why I want to speak to you, quietly, in private,” Stonebridge said, as if he’d read Scott’s opinion in his eyes. “He _is_ my son. My only child. He and I are not as intimate as we should be, but he is my _son._ And my son may be closer to you now than to anyone else in the world. I need to speak to you, Mr Scott.”

He didn’t know where the old man lived, but he didn’t need to ask. He could find out. “I’ll be there at six,” he said. 

“Thank you. I’ll put the kettle on for you.” 

……………………………….

George Montgomery Stonebridge lived on either a small farm or a large smallholding. Scott didn’t know enough about British agriculture to tell. 

Scott steered his car through a gate, up a short drive lined with trees, and to an open gravel yard in front of a double-storey house. He stopped the car, and got out, leaning against the car’s driver-side door to look up at the house. 

Red bricks, windows with little square panes linked by white. He didn’t know what the style was called. He didn’t know what the flower bushes on either side of the front door, in neat beds under the windows, were called, either, but he didn’t care. It all looked very cosy. 

“Nice,” he said to himself. “So this is how a Perisher retires.”

He beeped the car, and walked over to the door. The doorbell was set in a brass inlay, and he pressed it, and stepped back to enjoy a deep breath of rural Pommy-ness. 

The door opened. “Mr Scott.” The old man hadn’t changed out of his black suit. 

“Captain.” Scott took off his sunglasses, and slid them over the neck of his T-shirt. 

“Come in.” Daddy Stonebridge stepped away from the door, allowing Scott in, and he found himself in a shadowy passage. 

“The lounge is just along to your left. How do you like your tea, Mr Scott?”

Tea. Of course. These Brits really did like their tea as much as the stereotype said. He was getting to understand how that Gallipoli story got started. “Uh, lots of milk, three sugars. Thanks.” 

The living room wasn’t large, and the sofas cuddled snugly around a polished coffee table. The head of the coffee table faced a wide fireplace. Cosy. 

He sat down on the sofa, feeling the upholstery creak against his jeans. There were framed photographs on the coffee table, ranked like claymores, and he recognised a very young twerpy-looking Michael in some of them. There were recent pictures of Michael and Kerry, smiling and happy. Some of the oldest pictures, faded to shades of ochre, had a woman who was not in any of the others.

He picked up one of the photographs for a closer look. Twerpy Michael grinned back next to his father, and a young woman with long golden blonde hair. 

“My wife, Mary,” Captain Stonebridge said. 

Scott jumped. The Captain came in, carrying a tray in his hands. He set the tray down on the coffee table. “Your tea, Mr Scott.”

“Thank you.” He put the photograph back in its place, and reached for his tea, remembering to pick up the saucer as well. He held it awkwardly on his blue knee. 

Stonebridge sat down, and took up his teacup. “A friend in the police has told me that the man who shot Kerry is somehow connected to Michael’s work.”

“Craig Hanson. He’s SAS. He’s the elder brother of the man who went ape-sh–. Who lost his grip in the middle of a training exercise.”

“The man Michael shot.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Is that why he shot Kerry? Vengeance?”

“Yeah, looks like it.” Scott took a sip of his tea, and scalded his lip on it. He set the teacup back in its saucer. 

“She did nothing to that man, and he shot her anyway.” There was a quiet rage in the way he punched out the last few words. 

Scott said nothing. 

“Kerry was … I was so glad when they married. I feel as if I’ve lost a daughter, not a daughter-in-law. She was a part of _my_ family. This bastard took my _daughter_ away from _me,_ just as much as he took a wife away from Michael.”

The Captain set his teacup into his saucer, where it chimed slightly in a rapid porcelain tattoo of hatred. He stared at the ranks of photographs with ice-chip eyes. 

Daddy Stonebridge, oh _hell_ yeah. This is where Mikey gets it from. 

Scott balanced his cup and saucer in his right hand, and picked up a photograph from the table in the other. 

“What happened to her?” he asked, showing the face of the photograph to Stonebridge. 

“It was a car accident,” Captain Stonebridge said, pulling himself back into the present. “I don’t think Michael has ever truly recovered. She passed away when Michael was just twelve.” 

“Yeah, I know. Kerry, uh… she mentioned her.” She hadn’t mentioned, or hadn’t noticed, the similarity between them. Blonde hair – and Kate had been a blonde as well. And so was Clare – whoo boy. Michael went for a _Type._ “And he doesn’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“No. It was just the two of us. To be quite honest, for most of Michael’s childhood it was just the one of him. I spent most of my time at sea, and he spent most of his time with my parents, or in school.”

“Boarding school.” 

“Yes. Quite. In hindsight, that may have been something of a mistake. One learns to keep one’s feelings to oneself, growing up in boarding schools.”

“Yeah, I’ve sorta noticed he does that.”

“By the time I noticed that, it was already too late. I cannot help but think that if only I had…” 

His words ended with a little hitch, as if he was going to blurt out something that was too private to share with an almost-stranger. 

Scott decided to cover the old man’s embarrassment by taking a draught from his tea, and remembered too late that it was scalding hot. _Situational awareness, for fuck's sake,_ he cursed himself. 

“My son doesn’t do weak emotions. I can’t blame him for that, you understand. I do the same thing. But I understand the pain inside him. I felt the same way when Mary died. I sent him away to boarding school, because of the rage I felt, because I didn’t want my boy to be on the receiving end of my anger at God.”

He’d met the old guy just this afternoon, and here he was pouring his heart out. Scott shifted in his seat again. He didn’t like this. He wondered just how much about him Kerry had shared with her father-in-law, for the old man to be so chatty with a Yankee stranger he’d just met. 

“When I reached the police station I found my son in one of the trauma-counselling rooms,” Stonebridge said. “Sitting in a chair with Kerry’s shirt in his hands, just staring at it with nothing in his eyes.” 

“Shocked,” Scott said. 

“Not shocked,” the Captain corrected him, with a shake of his head. “Angry. Cold as ice, but murderously angry.”

“I’ve seen that.” Michael didn’t get upset. He hadn’t grieved visibly for Kate. He got quiet, cold, empty, as if his batteries had been removed. And inside the rage had mounted up, and up, and up, until he exploded in Mombasa and rammed a gun barrel into Crawford’s mouth. Crawford’s brains would have gone all over that shipping container, if Scott hadn’t stopped him. 

Not a healthy way of dealing with life’s little mishaps, Doc. 

“He locks his anger up inside him. I know that anger, Mr Scott. My anger cost me my son. I don’t want Michael to suffer the same rage that I did for so long. But I don’t know how to get it out of him. I cannot.” Captain Stonebridge shook his head. He set his shoulders back, straightening his spine, and Scott could see him pulling his mind back into gear. British stiff upper lip, buttoned back up. “Which brings up back to the reason I asked you here this evening.” 

“Which is?”

“To help my son. To help him unbottle his anger, before it poisons him, the way it poisoned me. He needs to let it out, and there’s no-one he can vent it with except you.” 

Scott looked at his tea, and narrowed his eyes. “Have you thought that maybe he just needs a good psychiatrist?”

“You know as well as I do that a psychiatrist on his medical records will put an end to his career,” Captain Stonebridge said, crisply. “And he _needs_ his career right now. He doesn’t need a psychiatrist, Mr Scott. No. He needs you.” 

“Me?”

“He talks to you, about things that matter to him. Doesn’t he?” The old man’s blue eyes were challenging. 

“I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“He doesn’t need a psychiatrist. Just someone who can show him how to feel his grief, and not be poisoned by it, like I was. I cannot help him, because I do not know how, and I do not know how to make him let me.”

“He’s your son.”

“The number one link between my son and me went into her grave this morning. She opened him up – she opened both of us up. Kerry brought us together. Without Kerry between us… Michael doesn’t confide in me. He never has.”

He stared back at the ice blue eyes. “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s just fucking tragic.”

The captain shook his head. “There has been too much water under the bridge for us. But you know him in all his moods. He confides in you. Kerry made that clear. He’ll open up to you. He trusts you.” 

Commanders of nuclear submarines weren’t supposed to beg _anyone_ for _anything,_ ever, but Captain Stonebridge was definitely begging him. 

Scott let a sigh break out, shaking his head. “You don’t need to ask. He’s my buddy. If there’s anything I can do, I’ll do it. I owe him too much to …” 

There was a noise at the door. Scott stiffened, but recognised the sound of a latchkey being turned in a lock, and a moment later the hinge of the door creaked slightly. 

“Michael?” the Captain called. 

“It’s me.” Michael Stonebridge’s voice came to Scott’s ears, and a moment later the man himself came around the doorway. 

He’d taken off the black jacket, and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt: cool white linen riding on smooth muscled torso. A whole career in the Army, and he hadn’t twigged yet just how gay that combination made him look, Scott thought. 

Michael pulled up, surprised by the sight of Scott sitting on his father’s sofa. He narrowed his eyes until they looked like tiny chips of ice. “I thought I recognised that car,” he accused. 

“He invited me,” Scott said, jerking a thumb at the Captain. He made a little performance of taking a sip from his teacup, holding his little finger crooked. “Cosy little place, I say, good sir,” he said to the Captain. 

Michael’s lips lifted in a slight smile. He rested his forearm on the door frame and leaned himself against it. “Nice to see you making yourself at home,” Michael said, with mock politeness. “Why don’t you help yourself to some of the furniture while you’re at it?”

“I’d rather help myself to some of these photos. Jeez, Mikey, you were a twerp when you were a kid! I gotta show some of these to Richmond.” 

“Have some tea with us, Michael?” the old man asked. “The kettle is still full.”

“No, thank you. I just had a cup with Twenty. I’m going to bring in the last of my things, and try to get my head down for a few hours.” 

“Of course.” 

“You’re staying here?” Scott asked. 

Michael looked away. “The house is too empty. I can’t stay there. It’s only temporary, until I get reassigned back to Twenty.” 

“Assuming you _can_ get reassigned back to Twenty,” Scott said. “You’ll have to pass a psych evaluation.” 

“Oh,” Michael said, and a cold smile crossed his lips, _“I_ can get reassigned back to Twenty. Don’t worry about that. I’ll stay here till then, and then live on base.” 

“Who’s going to take Candy?” Scott asked. 

“Candy?” the Captain asked. 

“Kerry’s cat,” Scott explained. 

“We lost Candy,” Michael said. “Didn’t Kerry tell you?” 

“Shit, dude. No.” 

“She found him lying by the back door, while we were in… while we were on that last mission. He must have been hit by a car – his back was broken.” His voice was perfectly level, as if he was discussing some distant historical event. 

“Shit, dude.” 

Michael pushed himself away from the door frame with a sigh. “I’m going to bring in my things.” He turned and went out. 

Scott waited until he heard the front door close. “Candy-cat was found by the back door with a broken back?” he asked the Captain, his voice low. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“And what would that be?” 

“Takes a whole lot of hatred to kill someone just to prove a fricking point. Maybe someone practiced first?” 

“You think _Hanson_ killed Kerry’s cat?”

“Escalation of hostilities. How to hurt Michael Stonebridge? Take away something he values. That should hurt the bastard. But it doesn’t. Right, take away something he values _more._ Kill his wife.” Scott shrugged his shoulders. “How long d’ye think he watched her, before he sat down with that scope?” 

“That’s insane.” 

“Hanson _is_ insane.” That much he knew. He’d seen a few. “But Michael is one of life’s innocents. He doesn’t _get_ pain for the sake of pain. He just doesn’t think like that.”

Stonebridge tilted his head, as if disbelieving Scott’s description. “He’s SAS. He’s hardly what _I_ would call innocent.” 

Scott shook his head. “He’s a soldier. Not a fanatic. He doesn’t know what real solid _hatred_ feels like.” Sometimes, he wondered if Stonebridge even knew what _feelings_ felt like. Or how to deal with them, when they hit him. There _was_ such a thing as too much stiff upper fucking lip. 

Captain Stonebridge puffed out his cheeks, and gazed sombrely at the photographs on the coffee table. “He knows now.” 

“Yeah.” That blank stare and too-calm voice was not a good sign. “Been there, and it ain’t right. Can’t say I like the idea of Mikey going down that road.” 

“Neither do I.”

He came to a decision. “Listen. He’s my buddy. And he’s a good guy. Whatever I can do for him, whatever I can, I’ll do. And I can do a lot.” 

“Thank you.”

“I owe him. He’s pulled my ass out of the fire too many times for me to remember. Time for me to repay the favor.” Scott put his teacup down. “Thanks for the tea, Captain.” 

………………………………………………………


	2. One

## CAPE TOWN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

## SOUTH AFRICA

 

“Knox has gone dark,” Dalton said, darkness in her eyes.  “It’s time we went dark too.”

 

* * *

 

‘Darkness,’ for Section Twenty, involved flying to Frankfort, and then flying straight back again on another passport.   Three days after their attack on Coldfalls Ridge, and two days after they were officially deported, Mr ‘Langley’ and Mr ‘Byers’ were back in the game.  

Cape Town International looked just the same as it did on the way out.

Michael Stonebridge felt grimy and tired.  The back of his shirt was sticking unpleasantly to his back, and he wanted a shave and a shower and a good sleep.  Or to hit someone.  He wasn’t sure which he wanted more. 

Scott had slept almost the whole way; the lucky bastard.  He’d woken only long enough to read the freebie newspaper they had been given on the layover in Johannesburg – examining every page as if he was deeply invested in the state of affairs in South Africa.  And then he’d folded the paper on his lap and fallen asleep, as neatly as if he’d switched himself off.  Stonebridge had been left to sit and stare at him for two more hours of envious insomnia.  Still, better wakefulness than nightmares; particularly not in a packed economy-class cabin.

They came through customs together, falling easily into stride as they crossed the hall.   Stonebridge’s eyes scanned the bustling crowds around them, and he knew Scott was doing the same.  He checked each male face, but he saw no familiar faces. 

No Craig Hanson. 

“Taxi?” Stonebridge suggested. 

“Nuh-uh.  Lunch first, _then_ taxi,” Scott said. 

Food, Stonebridge thought.  _Real food_ , not the plastic rubbish they’d had in the air.  “Right-o.  Going left?”

“Going left,” Scott echoed, as if they were on a mission.  They redirected their path toward a restaurant. 

They took a table in a restaurant on the mezzanine level with a good view of the concourse, and ordered burgers.  “I supposed you want to stop off and buy another Lonely Planet?” he said to Scott, when the waitress left. 

Scott scrunched up his mouth.  “Naah.  Place won’t have changed that much in a year.”

“Refresh your memory, Scott.”

“I don’t need to refresh my memory, Mikey.  I remember everything.  Read my lips.  _Ev_ -ery-thing.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right,” Stonebridge teased.  “Damien Einstein Scott.  Remind me again why you haven’t won a Nobel Prize?”

“’Cause I joined the army instead of college, dickhead.” 

Their beers arrived.   Scott ignored the glass, and simply tipped the bottle up to his lips in a deep draught.  “Ah-h-h.  That hits the spot,” he sighed. 

Stonebridge decided that if Scott was going to drink straight from the bottle, so would he.  He took a long draught of beer.  “What _is_ it with you and travel guides?” he asked, setting the bottle down. 

“Have to know what I’m getting into.  Proper. Prior. Planning. Prevents. Piss. Poor. Performance!”  he quoted, thumping time with his palm on the table top as if he was lecturing.    

“That’s what mission briefings are for, Scott.”

Scott shook his head.  “ _Soldiers_ get mission briefings,” he corrected.  “Me, I’m just a stranger in a strange land, and I gotta take care of myself.  I can't afford to make mistakes.  I can’t run to the nearest consulate if things go south.”  

“Yes, you can,” Stonebridge told him.  “You can run to the British consulate.” 

“Yeah,” Scott raised his beer bottle and toasted him with it.  “I guess I’ve gone _up_ in the world these days.”  He took another draught of his beer, his hairy Adam’s apple bobbing. 

Stonebridge narrowed his eyes at his partner, but there was no sign that Scott was being facetious.  Then again, compared to what he’d been doing when Stonebridge met him, maybe he had gone up in the world.  Section Twenty was a long, long way from cage-fighting and front-door security in a Malaysian brothel. 

Scott’s Adam’s apple stopped moving, and he lowered his bottle, slowly.  “Heads up.  Your four o’clock.  Nice and slow.”

Stonebridge picked up his beer, and shifted around so that his arm lay loosely over the backrest of his seat, as if he was scanning the airport for girls. 

“Two guys.  Big guy in the blue T-shirt and leather,” Scott said.  “And the little guy in a black hoodie.”

Stonebridge scanned the Brownian movement of humanity around the corner of the mezzanine, until his eyes picked them out.  “I see them.” 

The two men were pulling small carry-on bags, just the same way he and Scott were.  They had broad shoulders and tanned faces, and they strode out like soldiers: not just walking, but occupying the ground with each step. 

“The guy on the right’s Brazilian,” Scott said, without pointing.  “Randy Andy Correia.  Good with explosives.”

“Military?”

“Not the kind that wears a uniform, although I think he wishes he was.”

“PMC.”

“Not the kind you want to put on the payroll.” 

“ _Your_ kind of guy.” 

“ _Oooh._   You make it sound _so_ sexy.”

He saw LeatherJacket’s stride hitch slightly with surprise, and saw how he jogged his companion’s elbow, and pointed them out with a jerk of his chin.  “They’ve made us,” he said to Scott. 

“Not a problem.”  Scott picked up a hand and waved it at the two men.  “Andy’s OK. I've worked with him before. He's cool.”

When the two men walked over, Scott stood up to meet them.  He shook hands with Randy Andy with a heartiness that hinted that it was a test of strength, and then the two of them babbled happily at each other. 

… in Spanish.  Stonebridge supposed it was a good enough _lingua franca_ for an English-speaking Yank to talk to a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian, but it left the Limey in the middle with nothing to do except drink his beer, and try to look intelligent. 

The other man was standing to one side, listening closely, and Stonebridge was aware that he was being examined by cold eyes.  _Very_ cold eyes.  He had an idea the stranger spoke no Spanish either, but rather than open another conversation with Stonebridge the stranger simply watched, like a snake examining the chattering of birds.  Well, there was more than one snake around _this_ table, Stonebridge thought.  He drank his beer, and watched Scott discuss whatever he was discussing with his old buddy. 

At length Scott seemed to realize he’d forgotten something, and turned to Stonebridge.  He waved one hand casually in Stonebridge’s direction. 

“ _Mi amigo_ , Michael.”

“Very please to meet you,” Randy Andy said in Portuguese-accented English, and offered his hand.  “You are working with Scott now?”

“Yes.”  Stonebridge was ready for the bonecrusher handshake, and gave as good as he got. 

“You English?”

“Yes.”

“You get an email too, yes?”

“Email?”  Scott asked. 

“Work in Cape Town, pays good money for no questions asked?  The email is going all around the Silk Road.  You haven’t seen it yet?”

“Maybe I did see it, now that I think about it,” Scott said.  He rubbed his chin.  “But I’m already on a job, and my employers don’t take kindly to moonlighting, so I said no thanks.”

“I am between jobs.  The Circuit is too quiet.  So I said, yes, please.”

“You know who sent it?”  Scott asked. 

“I have met him.  His name is Matlock.  Another American.  He likes to go around with a _chica_ who is real hot-stuff with a rifle.”

“Hang on,” Scott said.  “This _chica_.  She’s a sniper?  Hot girl, young.  Black hair?” 

“Really hot little _chica_ , I thought she was Latina, but she’s English, too. They are called the Two Carls, but I don’t know why.”

“Well, fuck me.” Scott met Stonebridge’s eyes. 

“So our friends have a nickname,” Stonebridge said.  “That’s cute.”

“You know them?” Andy asked. 

“Yeah, you could say that,” Scott said.  “The _chica_ tried to blow us both up with a hand grenade two weeks ago.”

Andy jerked in surprise, but Scott didn’t elaborate. 

“What was the job?” Stonebridge asked. 

“We don’t know yet.  Go to Cape Town, the email said, and we will meet you there.”

“This is a mistake, buddy.”  Scott shook his head.  “I’ve got a bad feeling on this one, Andy.”

Stonebridge might only have met Andy a few minutes ago, but it did look as if Andy knew Scott.  Andy pulled his chin in, and stared sombrely at Scott.  “How so, _amigo?_ ”

“You aren’t going to fucking believe this, but Michael and me …” he gestured to Stonebridge, “we’ve been hired by the other side.”

“You joke.” 

“No joke.  Trust me on this one, buddy.  You don’t want this job, ‘cause you’re biting off way, _way_ more than you can chew.”

“You’re doing it.  Must be worth something.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, “you may want to think about that a bit.  You _really_ want to dance with me, buddy?” 

“The Circuit is quiet at the moment.  Men like you and me, we have to take our jobs where we find them.” 

“I’m _off_ the circuit.  I’m working for the Brits these days, and so’s Michael. This guy Matlock’s got his hands on something the British government wants back, and they’ll ice anyone who gets in their way.” 

“Scott…” Stonebridge said.

“Shut up, Michael.  Andy, I still owe you for Ecuador.  You saved my ass.  Take this as payback.  You’re on the losing side here.  I’d hate to see something bad happen to an old friend.  This job’s not worth the pay.”

Andy nodded his head, slowly.  “I would also hate to see that happen.” 

“Yeah.  It would be tragic.” 

“Maybe I _don’t_ want this job after all.” 

“Maybe it might be a good idea to buy another plane ticket and go home.  You can put the word out on the Silk Road for me, Andy.  Not this job.  The pay’s not worth it, cause the other side are seriously scary fuckers.”

Andy nodded.  He rubbed at his chin with one index finger, watching Scott.  After a moment, he opened his palm as if letting something go.  “Eh.  I have suddenly found an urge to see Rio at this time of year.  Homesick.  Such a pity.”

“Yeah,” Scott agreed, “but then who can say when a guy’s heart will tell him it’s time to go home?”

 “The British government doesn’t scare me!” The other man broke into the conversation for the first time. 

“ _Si,_ it doesn’t scare me either,” Andy said to him.  “But _this_ man,” he pointed at Scott,  “ _he_ scares me.”

“Pfah!” His eyes fixed on Scott, cold as gunsights.  “And so you are just going to go home?”

“I am not a soldier, I am a businessman.  I pick fights where there is profit to be found. And here, it is not.  _Asi es la vida_.”  Andy recovered the handle of his case, and pulled it up ready to go.  He nodded his head to Scott.  “Another time, _amigo.”_

“Nice seeing you, Andy.”

“ _Si._   Next time you are in Bogota, look up _Águilas Negras_.   I can vouch for you, if you want a job.”

“Right-o.”  He raised a hand in farewell, as the two men walked away. 

As soon as the two men were out of earshot, Stonebridge leaned forward over the table and lowered his voice.  

“What the hell just happened?” Stonebridge demanded. “You see one familiar face, and suddenly you get all leaky with intel?” 

“What’s the matter, Mikey?” Scott asked, unmoved by his anger.  “Don’t you like seeing me taking a command decision?”  He picked up his beer to drain it. 

“You don’t _get_ to make command decisions around here, Scott!”

Scott pointed the neck of the bottle at him.  “Now, you see, there’s the difference between you and me.  I _always_ make my own decisions.”

“It’s not your call to decide who needs to know.”

“Well, it’s a done deal.  If Andy puts the word out and stops people answering Knox’s cattle call, then that’s a bonus for us.  And if he doesn’t, then what have we lost?  Hey?  You think the Two Carls haven’t figured out who we work for?” 

Either Scott was making up his justifications for his decision on the spot, or his mind really did work that fast.  “And he’ll just take your word for it, and walk away, will he?” Stonebridge asked, sourly.

“Oh, yeah.  This is Andy’s day job.  He won’t stick around if the game’s not worth the candle.” 

“You didn’t have to mention the British government.” 

“It was my call.”

“Not your call.  You’re part of a command structure now, Scott.”

“Only for as long as _you_ are.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you’re going to go after Hanson, then you’ll be out in the cold too.”  

That was hardly a topic Stonebridge wanted to discuss, now or ever.  He picked up his beer and drank, by way of avoiding replying, but the bottle was nearly empty, and his evasive action finished it.  He put the empty bottle on the end of the table, next to Scott’s. 

"If you go down that road, Mikey, then you have to know where it'll end up.  You'll have to learn to think like one of the bad guys."

“You’re doing it again,” Stonebridge complained.    

“Doing what?” 

“Talking like a grown up.”

“That’s just too fucking bad, Mikey.”

“Listen.  I had a few words with our Tuareg friend, and she said a few things that made sense.  Someone hurts you, you get back at them.” 

“I know what our Tuareg friend said to you.  Don’t get mad, get even.”

Stonebridge shrugged.  “Some wrongs are just so big, they _need_ to be righted, regardless of what you have to do.  Sometimes you have to go to extremes to set the world straight again.” 

“Yeah, I’ve heard all that, and I got this to say.  Look at Andy.  Take a good look at him and remember what he looks like.  Take a good fucking look, Michael, because if you go down that path, that’s going to be you in a few years.” 

Stonebridge sat very still, and looked at him.  “I don’t care,” he said.   

“You say that, cause you haven’t been there.”

“And you _have,_ have you?  Somebody shot and murdered _your_ wife too, did they?”  Something writhed inside his heart, surging up out of his control.  He felt the hot burn of tears blazing inside his eyes, but the middle of an airport was not the place for emotion.  He clamped his jaw shut, and froze his feelings away so that his tears did not betray him.  “Fuck you, Scott,” he grated through his teeth.   

“I’ve been down that road, Michael, and it’s not one I want to see you follow.  You know there’s a saying, you look into the abyss, and the abyss looks back into you?  I didn’t just _look_ into the abyss, Mikey.  I fell in and landed on my head, and couldn’t get back up again.” 

“That’s _you_.” 

“Yeah, that’s me.  Story of my life.  But that’s not you, Michael.  You’re made of better stuff than that.”

“That’s for me to decide, Scott.”

“Yeah.  But if you go down that path, you gotta know in advance where you’ll end up.”  Scott raised a hand, and pointed it in the direction Randy Andy had gone.  “There’s where you’ll be.”

 

* * *

 

The new Crib had been set up in the largest room of an empty textile factory, where ranks of sewing machines had once whirred and roared, churning through rolls of fabric, turning out suits and shirts and dresses.  The collapse of the South African clothing industry had silenced the sewing machines for good, and nobody had moved into the old building since then.  It was too small for a modern factory, and too big for an SME, and too old to renovate for a new purpose – not now, not in _this_ economy.  Abandoned and empty; but the textile factory would serve British military intelligence very well, even if its owners never knew about its secret life.

Richmond was sitting at her usual station, Primary One.  She was in civvies, and her hair was loose.  Her right arm was still folded up like a chicken-wing in a white sling, from the bullet-wound she’d picked during the fight at Coldfalls Ridge. 

“Yo, Moon of my Life,” Scott greeted her, striding over to her.  “How’s tricks?” 

“Hello, my Sun and Stars,” Richmond said with a smile, swivelling her chair to face him.  “Welcome to the Khalasar.” 

“Heh, heh, heh,” Scott cackled, satisfied.  Richmond crossed her legs, rolled her head back, and flashed a grin up at him. 

Stonebridge wasn’t going to get involved in whatever dumb game the children were playing this week.  “Where’s the Major?”

“Which one?” Richmond asked.

“Lady Macbeth’s here already?” Scott asked, surprised. 

“She arrived a few hours ago.” Richmond said.  “She's in the office.” 

Stonebridge exchanged glances with Scott, and raised his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, go tell the teacher,” Scott said.  “I’ll be here.” He settled his backside against an edge of the table and crossed his legs at the ankles.

“Tell the teacher what?” Dalton’s voice broke in.  Stonebridge turned to see his CO come around the corner of the Crib, with Sinclair close behind her.  She was wrapping a tie around the end of her plait with quick flicks of her hard fingers.  She came to a brisk stop in front of the light-table, and folded her arms.  “If you’ve something to say, now’s the time to say it.”

He flicked a glance at Scott. 

Scott half-bowed, and made a flourish with one hand.  “Be my guest.” 

“Tell me _what_ , Sergeant?” Dalton repeated, with a stony tone in her voice. 

 Stonebridge braced his legs, and set his hands together in the small of his back.  Comfortable, familiar stand-easy. 

“In the airport, Scott ran into a couple of old friends,” he explained.  “Fellow mercenaries.  They said Carl Matlock has put out a cattle call for mercenaries to come to Cape Town.” 

“Knox is hiring himself a private army,” Scott said.    

“Really.” Dalton’s face didn’t change, but her gaze flicked to Scott, and then back to Stonebridge. 

“So Carl Matlock is hiring mercenaries,” Sinclair mused.  “Interesting.” 

“Scott’s got Matlock’s email address – because he got a job offer as well,” Stonebridge said.

“You made no mention to us about that,” Dalton challenged Scott 

Scott folded his arms.  “Yeah,” he drawled.  “I don’t tell you all my business.  I said no to the offer, and I figured that was the end of it.”

“Forward me that conversation,” Richmond said from her chair.  “I’ll see if I can get something from it.”

“Will do,” Scott agreed.   

“Get into the airport internal system, first, and get video of that meeting,” Sinclair told her.  “I want to see these fellow’s faces.”

“Roger that.” 

“Three-thirty seven,” Scott said to her over his shoulder.  “At the Mugg and Bean.” 

“Name names, Scott,” Dalton turned to him. 

“The guy I know is Antonio Correia, from Brazil.  He’s a heavy-hitter, specializes in explosives.  By which I mean real _personal_ explosives.  He survived the Medellin Cartel going down a few years ago, and since then he’s been hanging out his shingle all over Latin America.  He said he was kicking around in Ecuador when he got the message.” 

“And the other guy?” 

“Silent Bob, yeah.  Andy said he met him in the airport, he doesn’t speak any Spanish, and hardly ever speaks a goddamn word of English either."  

“Did Correia mention where he was going to meet Matlock?” 

“No.  The message was just come to Cape Town, and we’ll find you. He doesn’t know any more than that.” 

“I wonder if we can send someone undercover to tail them,” Sinclair thought aloud.  “Send one of our own on a job interview.”

“Not viable,” Dalton said. 

Scott agreed.  “Yeah, if Matlock sent out personal invites, it means he already _knows_ the guys he wants.  Me.  Andy.  Silent Bob, whoever he is.” 

“Have you anything to add, Sergeant?” Dalton asked Stonebridge. 

He shook his head.  “Most of the conversation was in Spanish.  But I don’t think Silent Bob is from Latin America.”

“He might be an Arab,” Scott said. “Andy came in via Istanbul, and that’s where he says he met Silent Bob.” 

“I’ll cross-check the flight.”  Baxter turned his chair to his keyboard, Primary Two. 

“It’s not likely either of them will be travelling under his own name,” Dalton said. 

“Here we go,” Richmond said.  “Airport surveillance camera up on the main screen.  Three thirty-seven on the dot.” 

Stonebridge turned, as the screen opened a window.  Grainy black and white imagery; and it took him a moment to calibrate his understanding.  There was the open floor of the concourse, there was the restaurant, and yes, there he and Scott were, nursing their drinks and talking earnestly. 

Richmond picked up Scott’s contacts as soon as they walked up, and zoomed in close. 

“Tall guy is Andy Correia,” Scott said to Richmond.  “Short guy is Silent Bob.”

“Silent Bob worries me more than Andy Correia,” Stonebridge said. 

“Yeah,” Scott agreed.  “Something tells me we’re going to see more of him than we like.”

Richmond zoomed in close on Silent Bob, and froze the feed on a nice, clear screenshot.  “Starting facial recognition on Silent Bob.”  The computer did its digital magic at her command, and the facial recognition software got to work in a corner of the main screen. 

“So, Conrad Knox is putting out the word for mercs.  Building a private army?”  Sinclair said. 

“Those triggers aren’t just for sale to the highest bidder,” Dalton said. 

 “Nope.  This asshole’s looking to become a nuclear power in his own right,” Scott said, still lounging comfortably against the table with his arms folded.  “He wants to become a contender.” 

“Right,” Dalton declared with a sharp emphasis that announced that the meeting was over.  “Julia, keep digging.  Find everything you can on Andy Correia and Silent Bob, find out where they’ve come from, and where they’re going.  This could be the break we’ve been looking for.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Richmond swivelled her chair back to Primary One.

“The military attaché has filled me in on the last two days,” Sinclair said. 

“Yeah,” Scott said, irritably.  “This asshole’s got nuclear weapons and he’s running around fuck-knows-where planning fuck-knows-what.  _Why_ isn’t this all over CNN already?”

“Because Conrad Knox is Mr Africa,” Dalton said.  “Beloved by politicians and TED Talks alike.  He's a global figure.  If we want to accuse him of owning WMDs, we need rock solid evidence.”

“Yeah,” Scott muttered.  “Like you had for Trojan Horse.  Real solid.” 

Stonebridge’s heart sank.  He reached out a hand and tapped a finger on Scott’s shoulder; a reminder that Dalton did not know about Trojan Horse, and a reassurance that Stonebridge, at least, had not forgotten. 

Scott folded his arms and rolled his head back to glance at Stonebridge.  “Just saying,” he said, with a lift of one shoulder in half a shrug.

“Knox is still underground,” Sinclair continued.  "All his appointments and appearances have been cancelled, and Ava’s as well.”

“Nobody’s raised eyebrows about that?” Dalton asked.

Sinclair shook his head.  “The Knox Foundation’s Twitter feed just says that they’ve had an administrative emergency, related to one of their projects, and it’s taking both their attention to handle.”

“Which _technically_ is the literal truth,” Stonebridge said.

“Yeah, the same way the London Riots was technically a flash mob that got out of hand,” Scott said. 

Sinclair went on.  “The helicopter hasn’t been seen.  The air traffic controllers around Coldfalls Ridge swear blind they didn’t see any helicopter take off.  And without police support, it’s hard to prove they're lying.”

“Knox has deep pockets,” Dalton said grimly.   

“And the South Africans have identified Curtis, at last,” Sinclair said.  “They’ve asked the Americans to please explain, which the Americans are not very happy about.  Which sounds like it made the attaché’s week.” 

Stonebridge glanced at Scott, in time to catch Scott raising his eyebrows, and rolling his eyes in Stonebridge’s direction. 

“A word with you, Sergeant,” Dalton said. 

“Yes, ma’am.”  He followed her into her office.

‘Office’ was perhaps too confining a term for what was really just a screened-off space in the Crib.  In the informal atmosphere of Twenty, any privacy in the office was only due to the agreement of everyone else in the Crib not to listen in.  Grant had always honoured her end of the mutual agreement by never raising her voice. 

Dalton came to a stop, and turned on her heels to stare at him.  Her gaze was cool and thoughtful.  That one strand of dark hair that always escaped from her plait had worked its way back to where it wanted to be. 

“So, Sergeant.  Did you have a nice flight?”

“Uneventful, ma’am.”  He settled into stand-easy again. 

“I received a _delightful_ piece of information as soon as I arrived.”  She had a little habit of lifting herself energetically onto her toes when she emphasised particular words, and _delightful_ received that emphasis.  “Christy Bryant is in Cape Town.  Scott’s old flame.”

“Ma’am.”

“While you were on route, did Scott say anything to you about her?” 

“Not a word,” he said, and added, “He slept most of the way.” 

“Any indications that he’s thinking of going home?  To the States?”

He thought.  There had been that one comment in the airport – _Who knew when a man’s heart would tell him to go home?_ – but surely that had just been a facetious aside?  A throwaway comment, not a statement of intent?  “Not that I can recall.” 

“Good.”  

“There’s something else you should know about Scott’s little talk with Andy Correia, ma’am.” 

“Go on.” 

“He told Correia that he works for British intelligence.  Told Correia that the British government wants to put its hands on something that Matlock has in his possession.”

“Shit.” 

“I checked him, but the genie’s out of the bottle.”

“Well, it was going to come out anyway, sooner or later.”

“And secondly, he warned Correia off the job.” 

“Warned him off?”

“Threatened him, in not so many words.   You’re biting off more than you can chew, you don’t want to dance with me, that sort of thing.  All very friendly, but still unmistakably _go away_.”

“Throwing his weight around with a Medellin hitman?  That’s very bold of Scott.” 

“The interesting thing is that it seemed like Correia took the warning seriously.  He agreed to go back to South America.  Just on Scott’s say-so.” 

She raised her head and gazed thoughtfully at the iron latticework that supported most of the Crib’s wiring.  “Ex-hitmen from the Medellin Cartel don’t usually just pack up and leave because someone asks them to.” 

“My thoughts exactly.  It makes me wonder what Scott’s really been up to these last few years, to be on back-slapping terms with a killer like Andy Correia.”  

 “I’ve learned a few things since Mogadishu that aren’t in his MI6 file.”

“Relating to his past?”

“I had a nice long talk with Christy Bryant.  About Scott.  And something about the way she talked makes me think that Langley wants him back.” 

Stonebridge pursed his lips, and shook his head.  Scott had burned the file that exonerated him, deliberately destroying his only key to get back into Delta Force.  “He’s not going back,” he declared.

“That doesn’t mean Langley isn’t going to try.  He’s much more valuable than he seems.” 

“That’s not difficult,” he grunted.  “He _seems_ like an arsehole.”

She shook her head.  “Damien Scott, for all his faults, is a very valuable asset.”  She folded her arms and paced back and forth.  “As it turns out, Eleanor Grant made a good call when she scraped him up off the gutter.  Not just because of what he can do, but what he knows, and _who_ he knows.  He has inside knowledge of circles that it would take an undercover agent _years_ to penetrate.  His contacts in the Far East alone are worth a great deal more to MI6 than his military skills.  And Section Twenty picked him up, for no more reason than because he just happened to _like_ John Porter?  When an asset like that walks in out of the cold, you keep him.” 

“He got paid for it.  He’s still getting paid a contractor’s fee.”  Which was considerably more than _Stonebridge_ was paid, even as a Sergeant in the SAS.

“He gets paid,” she disagreed, “but he only stays because he likes it here.” 

“He likes getting paid,” he protested.   

She shook her head.  “Money is not his prime motivator, no matter what he likes to pretend.  Bryant was very clear on that.  Our boy Scott is a _romantic._   He’ll stay, if he wants to stay.  But the CIA knows how valuable he is, and they want their prodigal son back.  Hence, Christy Bryant’s _oh-so_ _coincidental_ arrival in Cape Town.”

She was stretching her analysis too far, he thought, and he shook his head.  “Just because Christy Bryant is here, doesn’t mean that she’s here for Scott.”

“Oh, it _does_ ,” she said, and her voice was almost a croon of dislike.  “She made that _very_ clear.  She’ll seduce him back, by any means she has.”

“If he chooses to go back, we can’t force him to stay.  He does as he pleases.”  _I always make my own decisions_ , he’d said in the airport.   “If he wants to stay, he’ll stay.”

“Which brings me neatly around to you, Sergeant.”  She stopped pacing, and turned to face him.

“Me?” 

“Scott does as he pleases, and the only way to keep him is if he pleases to stay.  So we’re going to have to make sure that he _does_ please to stay.  _They’ll_ use any method to get him back?  Very well.  _We’ll_ use any method to keep him.”

Stonebridge frowned.  “Where do I fit in?” Stonebridge asked. 

She braced her hands on the table, and leaned over it toward him, seriously.  “You’re going to ensure that he likes us more than he likes them.”

Stonebridge frowned again.  “I’m sorry.  I’m not quite sure of my instructions.”

“Isn’t it clear yet?  The way to keep is not to bribe him, but to seduce him.”

“You’re going to seduce him?” he asked.  He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.  Scott might try to get his leg over anyone who stayed still long enough in his vicinity, but _Dalton?_   Ever since ‘Rosie’ turned into ‘Rachel,’ he’d regarded her with all the warmth of a snake watching a crocodile. 

“I’m not.  You are.”

 _“Me?”_ He couldn’t help it.  The word came out as a startled squawk.   

“Surely you’ve had that training, Sergeant?” she asked, archly.  “Honeytrap 101?”

“Yes, but that’s…!”

“Scott is not as straight as he likes to pretend, according to his file.” 

“He’s straight enough to fool me!  Surely a woman would be a better bet?  Have you tried asking someone else?  Richmond?”

“Richmond has …” she cleared her throat, “Been there, done that.  Her choice of words.”

“How about Corporal Morrison?” he suggested.  “Or Beckinsale?”  Or _any_ woman within screaming distance between the ages of eighteen and … hell, he didn’t even know if Scott _had_ an upper age limit _.  Any_ woman!  Any woman would be better than himself. 

“Scott’s relationship with women is more superficial than his relationship with men.”  She braced her fists on the tabletop, and rocked on her heels, staring at them.  “I could rant about the old madonna-whore dichotomy, but it wouldn’t impact on the task at hand.  Scott sleeps with women, or he connects with them, but he doesn’t do both.  The deeper connection just won’t be there, with Morrison or Beckinsale.  As Richmond said, it was fun, but it was _only_ fun.”

“Good grief, you’re serious,” Stonebridge said.  His legs had grown shaky, and he felt the urge to laugh at her, as if he could force her to be sensible by sheer force of hysterics.  “You seriously think I’m going to seduce him – and you think it’ll _work?_ ”

“I am deadly serious, Sergeant.  Scott is a valuable asset to MI6.  And just like any other valuable asset, it’s our duty to make sure we keep him.  We cannot afford to lose his knowledge. This is no more and no less than any other strategic objective.”

“Yes, but …” he ran out of any words beyond the phrase _'I don’t want to,_ ' and started again.  “Haven’t you thought about just increasing his pay packet?”

“They’ll just increase it in turn.  Their pockets are deeper than ours.  But the one thing they don’t have is _you_ , Sergeant.  And he _has_ formed a nice cosy little attachment with you, hasn’t he?”

“We’ve become friends, if that’s what you mean.” 

“More than friends.  Who came to his rescue in Mogadishu?  Who came to _your_ rescue, the night Kerry miscarried?”

He jerked, shock whipping his head back.  _Kerry’s blood on the bedsheets.  Kerry’s blood on his hands, on her shirt in the sunshine, Kerry falling backward away from him._ The vision exploded into his mind, closed his world down to just that awful moment – and the rage roared up inside him.  She’d been digging around in his personnel file, digging in places that should never be open to business-as-usual. 

“You _bitch!_ ”  The words burst out of his mouth before they even registered in his brain. 

He saw her eyes widen, and she must have realized that she’d pushed a dangerous button.  She had been leaning intently over the table, but something on his face made her straighten her back, and raise herself to her full height. 

Whatever civility had been in the conversation was now gone.  Her face was like stone. 

“You know what’s called for, Sergeant,” she snapped.  “You know how important it is, and like all of us here you’ve sworn to do your duty – or did you think that only female operatives were called on to do this?”

The anger simmered inside him, threatening to get out of his control.  “Like you slept with Othmani,” he barked, knotting his fists to keep his arms at his sides.  “What was it he said that night?  The taste of your skin, and your lies?” 

“Just another means to an end.  And _you_ are the means, and the end is keeping Damien Scott out of Langley’s pockets.  No more, no less.  Nobody says you have to like it.” 

“And what if I refuse?”

“If you refuse, and we lose Scott back to Bryant’s dark little corner of Langley, my career will be finished.  But rest assured, Sergeant.  Have no doubt.”  She set one index finger down on the table top.  “I _will_ make _absolutely_ sure you go down with me.”

“Huh,” he grunted, and turned the corners of his lips down in a sour moue.  As if _that_ was a threat any longer, when he already wanted to pack in his job to hunt down Hanson.    

But she seemed to misread the grunt as appreciation, and not dismissal.  “If you think sleeping with men for the Crown is any less sordid than killing them, then you have a _very_ inflated opinion of your career.  But I am not letting _my_ career be sunk because you’re squeamish.”

“Scott’s right about you,” he said, surprised at how easy cheek was when you didn’t actually care any more.  The rage was still bubbling, but he had his emotions firmly back under his command.  “You really are Lady Macbeth!”

She straightened her back, and stared at him, her challenge in her eyes.  “I know exactly where I want to take my career, and I know what I have to do to get there.”

“Twenty’s just another stepping stone to you.” 

“It’s just another stepping stone, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to push my stepping stone under water while I’m still standing on it.  I’m not letting _anything_ blot my copy-book, and that includes not fucking up Section Twenty.  And that, Sergeant, means doing _everything_ in my power to stop a valuable asset like Damien Scott wandering back into the wilderness.  Is that understood?” 

If he refused, she would sink him. 

But he’d already sunk, and it was easy to conceal his indifference under military obedience.  He swallowed his rage down, pressing it tightly inside his centre of gravity like a hot coal.  He braced himself to attention. 

“Crystal clear, ma’am,” he said, staring blankly above her head.    

“So you will make nice with Scott.  You’ll make yourself available.  You’ll make yourself into his Cleopatra.  Wallis Simpson for his Edward VIII.  At the very least, Boswell to his Johnson.  Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“That will be all, Sergeant.  Go home.”

 

* * *

Stonebridge pulled up the car outside the gate, and hit the remote on the gate.  It slid open, clanking and rattling slightly in its tracks.  He put the car into first, and eased it into the driveway.  The house and paved front yard glowed in the sunset. 

“Very nice.” 

“This’s got to be a mistake,” Scott said.  He flipped the door’s handle and opened it. 

Stonebridge copied him on his side, and they looked at each other over the car’s roof quizzically. “The remote opens the gate,” Stonebridge said.  “This is the address the embassy gave us.” 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Scott exulted.  He turned on his heel and examined the double-storey building around them.  An elegant bricked front yard, with spiky succulent plants neatly husbanded in narrow beds.  White adobe-style walls rose above their heads.  “This whole place, just for the two of us?”

“You know, if they’re going to make this sort of mistake,” - if it _was_ a mistake, he thought, and in the light of Dalton’s order it probably wasn’t:  Cleopatra needed a nice carpet to seduce Caesar -  “Then I’m _really_ not in the mood right now to look a gift horse in the mouth.”  He slammed the driver’s door. 

They met at the car’s boot, and took out their bags.  “What’s got you so riled?”  Scott asked. 

“Nothing.”  He slammed the boot.

“Not _nothing_.  You’ve had steam coming out of your ears since we left the Crib.  What happened between you and Lady Macbeth?”

“Let’s just say she proved her nickname right, and leave it at that, yeah?”

“If you say so, buddy.” 

Stonebridge unlocked the front door, and punched the alarm code into the box before the house could scream to the High Commission.

“Whoa-a-a-a,” Scott breathed, as he took in his first sight of the house.  Kitchen, dining room, living room, bound together into a single space by glass sliding doors and polished brass.  The sunset sent shafts of golden light beaming in, as thick as syrup.  The light picked out highlights on the polished brasswork, gold tiles and glass.

Scott dumped his bag on the floor, and wandered into the kitchen area.  “Somebody at the Consulate made a mistake.” 

“Maybe,” Stonebridge said, noncommittally. 

 “Heh-heh-heh.  Do you want a lovely thought?” 

“Not really.” 

“Somewhere in this city, right now, some aristocratic diplo-wonk is being shown into _our_ apartment.  Heh-he-he- _hehhh_.  Oh, this is too good.  This is just too good.”   

Stonebridge drifted into the kitchen and opened the fridge door.  The invisible pixies from the High Commission had even put in a supply of bread and milk and fruit. All that was missing was a bottle of champagne, chocolates and red rose petals.  He shuddered slightly. 

The right environment is important, his training had said.  Conversation, environment, physical attraction, and just the right level of flirting, so the target thinks that he or she is taking the initiative.  Play those factors off, just right, and you’ll achieve the objective.  Dalton had taken some pains to ensure that at least the second of those factors was met – or rather some minion of the military attaché had taken pains.   

Not that he had the slightest intention in capitalising on it.  Fuck Dalton’s orders. 

“Michael!” the roar came from upstairs.  Scott appeared at the head of the stairs.  “You gotta see the size of this bathtub!” 

He went up to see it, just out of curiosity.  And Scott was right.  It wasn’t just huge, it was glorious.  A bath for having long languorous soapy sex, not for scrubbing.  The soft golden lighting in the bathroom made it look as warm and inviting as a newly laid egg.

“Oh, yeah,” Scott crooned with gluttonous delight.  He picked up a bottle from the bath shelf.  “Oh, ho-ho-ho. Bubble bath, courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.” 

“I never saw you Delta guys as bubble bath junkies.” 

“Shows what _you_ know.” 

“Make much of that on your recruiting posters, then, do you?”

“Oh, yeah.  Haven’t you seen ‘em?  Turn to the back of Magnum magazine, and there they are.  Army!  Soap all you can soap!”  He upturned the bottle and poured a streak of pink goo into the pristine bath, and turned on both taps.  He pulled his T-shirt over his head with a single flick of both arms. 

Stonebridge had seen Scott’s chest before, but with Dalton’s order still fresh in his mind the hairiness of Scott’s body shocked him.  “What the hell are you doing?”  he barked. 

“What’s it look like?  I’m going to have a bath.”  He dropped the shirt on the floor.

“I want to have a shower!”

“What’s stopping you?  This tub is going to take a while.  Shower away, soldier.” 

He hesitated, and then doglegged around Scott and out of the bathroom.  “Don’t lock me out!” he warned Scott. 

He trotted downstairs for his bag, unzipped it and took his personals out.  He took the stairs two at a time, passing Scott coming down.  The door banged as he closed it; a fortification between himself and the world.  He hadn’t been alone, _properly alone_ , for days.  He’d been either with Scott, or bottled up in an aircraft.  Privacy was a luxury. 

He turned off the bath taps, and turned on the shower.  He pulled off his boots, peeled off his sticky clothes, and dropped the lot on the tiles.  Seconds later he was under the hot water, letting it hit his face, and stream like a caress down his chest. 

He stayed there for a long time, even after he’d scrubbed shampoo into his scalp, and washed his body from head to feet. 

The scalding water was barely tolerable, but the heat was clean, astringent; scouring away the foulness he felt still clinging to him.  He could lean both palms against the wall under the shower head, close his eyes against it and surrender to the cocoon of hot water around him. The grime of Coldfalls Ridge and Frankfort and the long plane trip was flooding off his body and running down the drain.  

He wished he could stay there longer.  Long enough for the heat to penetrate to his mind, and scrub him clean inside as well as out.  He craved emptiness.  Sterility.  Unconsciousness. 

Unconsciousness was better than pain; pain was better than grief; but the hot water gave him neither release nor unconsciousness, and eventually he gave up.  He turned off both shower taps, and climbed out. 

He pulled on his pyjama bottoms.  The mirror was a front for a cupboard – and the Consular Pixies had been here too.  He brushed his teeth, and then stood for a moment looking closely at himself in the mirror.  There was visible stubble on his cheeks, and he ran his hand over his face.  He didn’t like having stubble scraping on his pillow, and he took out his razor and shaving cream, and ran a bit of water into the basin. 

His chest too was showing signs of stubble.  He ran his hand over his nipples, feeling the scratch of stubble under his palm.  He had better deal with that too, before he went home again.  Kerry didn’t like …

He froze. 

Kerry was dead.  It didn’t matter what Kerry thought of his chest hair, because he would never feel her hands on his body ever again.  Her sexual tastes, and every secret they’d enjoyed in the privacy of their marriage bed, had died with her.  He never had to shave any part of his body, ever again.  It was something he’d done because it turned her on, and he’d liked turning her on, and now it was something he never had to do again. He wouldn’t be going home to Kerry, ever again, because she was gone. 

He put the razor down on the basin, and stared at himself in the mirror.

He felt guilty, as though he was somehow betraying her by adjusting the practicalities of his life around the fact that she was gone.  Or as if she was still here, watching him unseen, and he was making her feel more abandoned and dead than she already was. 

But he didn’t have to look like anything for anyone any more.  There was no-one left in the world who cared what he looked like.    

He squeezed shaving cream into his palm and stroked it over his face and throat, and then rinsed the razor in the water to warm it.  He set the old safety-blade to his ear, and stroked it gently down the side of his jaw.  Rinse it off in the water.  Raise the blade for another stroke.

He didn’t have to look like anything for anyone any more; not even for his job. 

It was an odd fact of Special Forces life: once you reached a certain point, no-one really cared what you looked like.  The higher you went, the less it mattered how you looked, and the more it mattered how you thought – a fact that went a long way to explaining Damien Scott.  SF was the opposite to Basic, actually, where it mattered greatly how neatly one ironed one’s trousers, but _'keep it to yourself, Soldier, no-one gives a shit what you think…'_

No-one gave a shit what _he_ thought, either, though. Dalton certainly didn't.  

The anger suddenly lofted like a storm inside him, taking him by surprise as if it was a wild force out of his control, and his muscles clenched with a spasm of rage.  His hand flexed around the razor’s handle, and the blade jerked against his skin. He felt the sudden sting of pain from his cheek, and he refocused his eyes on the mirror. 

Blood was blossoming like a red flower in the white cloud of the lather.  He lowered the razor, and stared at it. 

Blood, his own blood, mixing with water and lather.  His own blood, and his face was burning, like a single hot coal pressed to his skin.

Jesus, he’d gone and cut his face.  Idiot.  As he looked, the spot of red grew larger. 

He’d have to stick something on that, and walk around tomorrow with the stupid mark on his face. Well, he bloody deserved it, for getting angry with a blade in his hand.  What was a little pain, when he already felt so bitter?  In fact, this was nothing compared to taking his gun and putting it in his mouth, which was one way he’d thought about dealing with his anger.  He deserved far worse than a nick on his face. 

Unconsciousness was better than pain, but pain was at least _immeasurably_ better than grief.  Pain, he could at least control.  In fact, the blood forming a little red teardrop on the side of his cheek was probably not _enough_ pain. 

He looked down at his arm. 

To think was to act.  Except that he was not thinking, not really.  The razor seemed to move by itself, without a conscious decision.  He turned it in his fingers so that a corner of the safety blade rested on his skin, and dug it in. 

It burned. 

 _Jesus_ , he thought to himself, dreamily, _I’ve gone and self-inflicted an injury.  That’s a court martial offence._

He drew the blade a neat centimetre along the thickest part of his forearm, and then moved it away so that he could see the blood following its track.  It hurt.  It hurt a _lot,_ and he inhaled deeply, riding it.  It was real.  It was visible.  It was quantifiable, undeniable, unavoidable, and he realized that this was what grief _looked_ like. 

He stood and watched as a ribbon of blood crept slowly over his arm, followed by another one a few millimetres away.

A line from an old war story that his father had given to him seeped out of the depths of his memory, and recited itself in his mind.  _Pain and life were passing away together_ …  But he wasn’t a cavalry horse, and he wasn’t dying.  Pain alone was passing away with his blood, as if his blood was drawing it out of him.  As if the blood was letting down the pressure inside him, and the burn on his arm was merely a faucet.  It was like magic. 

He closed his eyes. 

The same image appeared instantly in his mind, but it was Kerry’s blood he saw, not his. 

For the first time, he gave himself over to the memory instead of flinching.  Kerry’s blood, in her shirt, on his hands, and Kerry herself collapsing backwards with the life punched out of her.  It should have been his blood running on the grass in the English sunshine, not hers.  He couldn’t join her just yet, but here was his blood, offered up in memory of Kerry. 

“What’s taking you so long?” 

Heavy fists banged on the door, and he dropped the razor. The spell broke. 

“How long’s it take you to shower, asshole?”

 “I’ve cut myself shaving,” he called back.  Shit, he _had_ cut himself.  The blood wasn’t just ribboning down his forearm, it had had enough time to splash in bright droplets on the floor.  Bright, perfectly circular droplets of his blood, dark as rose petals on the tiles.  “Oh, shit!”  

“What?”  To his horror, the door immediately opened. 

“Oy!”  He swung around, holding his arm with the other hand.  “I didn’t say barge in!”

“Shit!”  Scott’s eyes went immediately to his arm, dropped to the floor, and then back up to his arm.  He shoved the door open and came in. 

Stonebridge backed up hurriedly.  “I’ve got this, Scott.”

“The fuck you do, asshole!” Scott closed in on him, pinning him against the corner of the shower stall, so that he couldn’t back up any further without obviously fleeing.  Scott’s hand reached out for the toilet roll, and pulled off a long white streamer in a long flowing loop.  He took Stonebridge’s elbow in one hand, and planted the toilet paper down on the cut. 

“How the fuck do you cut your _arm_ open shaving?” 

“I nicked my face, and dropped the razor.”  The lie slid out, as easily as if it wanted to be told.  He closed his hand around the impromptu dressing.   

“Sit, dickhead.”  Scott shoved him into a sitting position on the floor, and he let his knees buckle obediently.  “Keep the arm up.  That’ll need the first aid kit.” 

“In the mirror cabinet.”  He sat on the floor, still slightly dazed, as Scott opened the cabinet’s doors and pulled out a blue plastic box. 

Scott set the first aid box down on the edge of the bath and flipped the lid open.  “What have we got in this magic box of tricks?”  Scott said.  He pulled out a little bottle.  “Move the TP,” he ordered, unscrewing the lid, and nodding at the arm. 

Stonebridge pulled away the toilet paper, and Scott upended the bottle and splashed antiseptic on it.  The stuff burned like fire, and the familiar smell of it struck his nostrils with all the remembered weight of his various combat scrapes.  “Fucking hell,” he hissed. 

“Bandage,” Scott said.  He went down on one knee over Stonebridge, and clamped a dressing on the cut, a proper one this time.  His strong fingers closed over Stonebridge’s forearm.  “Let’s give it a bit of pressure and see if it stops, otherwise you’re for the emergency room, buddy.” 

“It’s a neat cut, it’ll stop,” Stonebridge said. 

“Wonder if there are sutures in here,” Scott mused, and started poking around in the contents of the box with his other hand.  He pulled out an umbilical clip, and stared at it with amazement in his blue eyes.  

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Stonebridge protested. 

“Not that bad?”  Scott flipped the mystery of the umbilical clip back into the first aid box.  “Where’d all that blood come from?”

“I … didn’t notice it.  It's not that bad.  Look, mate, it's already clotting.” 

He was aware, suddenly, that he and Scott were both still naked to the waist.  And that Scott was very close to him, still holding the dressing on the cut.  Scott’s knee was close to his bare shoulder. 

He’d never been so aware of Scott’s body, not even on the day he’d dug around in Scott’s thigh to dig a bullet out of his leg.  He was aware of Scott’s smoky breath, and the hair on his chest and belly, and the way his muscles pulled his jeans into tight furrows around his waist.  Scott’s tattooed flank was close enough to touch, if he wanted to, which he did _not._  

 “I’ve got this,” he said, putting his free hand around the dressing over Scott’s warm fingers. 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  A moment later he drew his hand out from under Stonebridge’s, and Stonebridge was able to apply his own pressure. 

Scott reached over, pulled another scrap of toilet paper, and without warning his hand was on Stonebridge’s face. 

Stonebridge flinched, which knocked the back of his head against the wall. 

“Hold _still_ , asshole!  Your face is bleeding.”  He followed the flinch with his hand, and Stonebridge felt his rough finger against his cheek.  “There.  Classic man-bandage.”  The finger went away, but Scott’s eyes stayed on his face for a long moment. 

“Thanks.”  He got both legs under him, and wriggled to his feet without using his arms.  Standing up felt a lot better than sitting crumpled against the wall like a hobo. 

“Want to tell me what the hell just happened?”

“Cut my face, dropped the razor on my arm.”  The cut was beginning to sting.  And he was beginning to feel deeply embarrassed.  _Better_ , mind you; but embarrassed.

“And the blood?”  Scott nodded his head toward the pattern of droplets on the floor, but his eyes were on Stonebridge’s, and they saw too much.  “How long did you stand there and look at it?”

“I didn’t notice it,” he lied.  He couldn’t meet Scott’s eyes any longer.  “It’s a very fine cut.  You know, like a paper cut.  Sometimes you can get a paper cut and not notice it until after!  I didn’t feel it until I looked down, and there it was.” 

“Yeah, sure.”  Scott agreed, his tone mild.  “What are we going to do with you, Mikey?”

Scott’s eyes saw too much.  Scott suspected, but at least Scott wouldn’t _know_ if he didn’t admit it.  “I’m fine.” 

“Sure you are.” 

“I’m fine. I promise!” 

“Very wise dude once said, when someone starts making unsolicited promises, it’s because he knows you shouldn’t believe him.” 

“Well, thank you very much!” he snapped, the anger rising instinctively to cover his guilty secret. He couldn’t lie to Scott, so perhaps he could simply rebuff him.  He deliberately hardened his voice.  “I don’t know why I’d lie about a shaving cut. I am _fine!_ ”

Scott reacted to his anger the way he reacted to everyone’s anger: he ignored it.  “Yeah,” he said.  “If you say so.  OK.”

“You’ve got that part right,” he said.  “I _am_ going to be OK.”

Scott looked at him for a moment, and then, as if he had come to a decision, a small smile crossed his face.  “Besides, I told your old man I’d look after you.  A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, right?  Especially for a buddy in bad shape.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, if the bleeding doesn’t stop in ten, yell, and we’ll run you down to the ER.” 

He turned and disappeared through the door, leaving Stonebridge staring after him suspiciously.

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning, they went back to the Crib, and straight into ‘prayers:’ the morning round-up of status reports and plans. 

Scott plumped himself down in an empty chair, and rocked it back to put his feet up on the edge of the light-table. 

For once, they had all the space they wanted in the Crib.  All the auxiliaries had gone on back to London without them.  Without the Awesome Foursome bustling in the background, the Crib was as empty as a bar on a Monday morning.  The blue lights and the monitors flickered and buzzed, data and intel flowing around.   Scott could pretend he was Captain of the Starship Enterprise – a mental image he decided he _wouldn’t_ share with Mikey. 

Mikey didn’t look like he wanted to play Spock to Scott’s Kirk.  He still looked hammered this morning.  The broad planes of his face looked heavy, and weighed down with gloom, and the line of his back was rigid.  He probably hadn’t slept very well – again.

Julia Richmond broke the bad news to Scott.  “Your friend Antonio Correia is still in the country.  He didn’t leave, not on that passport.” 

“Ah, fuck,” Scott said. 

“Did you manage to track him, Sergeant?”  Lady Macbeth asked. 

“Negative, ma’am.  He left the airport with Silent Bob, and got into a taxi.  I traced them as far as Bellville, and there I lost them.”

“Somebody picked them up.” 

“Is this guy going to be a problem, Scott?” Dalton asked.

“I can handle him,” Scott said.  He hoped he wouldn’t have to.  He owed Andy too much. 

“And we _still_ don’t know who Silent Bob is,” Sinclair said.  “Julia?” 

“I’ve been running him through every facial recognition database I can think of,” Richmond said.  “MI6, MI5, Interpol - I even sent it to the IMO’s piracy database in Kuala Lumpur.  Nothing.  He’s a ghost.”

“And, last but not least, the military attaché wants a word with Sergeant Stonebridge this morning.”  Sinclair reached into his breast pocket, drew out a white card between index and ring fingers, and flourished it at Stonebridge.  “On this number only.”

“Me?”  Michael wondered suspiciously.  “What does the Ministry of Silly Walks want with _me?_ ” 

“Wait …what?” Scott asked, astounded.  He jerked himself up so that the chair’s front legs thumped down.  “Ministry of _what?_ ”

“That’s for the attaché to know, and you to find out,” Dalton said, ignoring Scott.  “Right, people.  We have nukes to find.  Sinclair, a word.” 

The meeting broke up. 

“The Ministry of _what?_ ” Scott asked Michael. 

“It’s a joke,”  Mikey replied, distractedly.  He turned the card over, and took his cellphone out of his pocket.  “You know, Monty Python.”

“Who’s Monty Python?” 

Michael was about to dial, but he lowered it, and gazed at Scott in consternation, as if he’d just announced he felt like having a nice fried puppy for din-dins, old chap.  

“ _What_ did you just say?”  Michael asked.

“Who’s Monty Python?” 

Michael opened his eyes wide, and blinked several times, rapidly.  “How can you not know Monty Python?”

“I’m American,” Scott protested.  “So sue me!  Who’s Monty Python?  One of your Premier League pussies?”

Michael swivelled away on one boot-toe.  “Major Sinclair,” he called across the Crib, “Permission to shoot the American now?”

Sinclair looked up from his discussion with Dalton.  “Why?”

“He wants to know if Monty Python plays football.”

Scott rolled his eyes, and raised his hands to the roof.  _Limeys._   Can’t live with ‘em; can’t go home to live with sane people. 

"Permission denied, Sergeant.”

“ _Denied?_ ”

“The modern criminal justice paradigm prefers the _rehabilitation_ of delinquents,” Sinclair said crisply.  “ _If_ possible. You'll just have to find a way to rehabilitate him.” He turned back to Dalton.

“Baxter?” Scott asked the younger man.  “Throw me a bone, buddy.  Who’s Monty Python?” 

“Comedy troupe from the seventies,” Baxter said.  “John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and ... and…and…?” he snapped his fingers, trying to jog his own memory, and gave up with a grunt.

“Don’t worry, Scott,” Julia said, taking pity on him.  “You’re not missing out on much.  They weren’t all that funny.”

“I’m going to go make this phone call, before we have a blue-on-blue incident in here,” Michael said, heavily.  He took his phone and stalked away. 

Scott picked up his chair by the seat and scooted over to Richmond.  He dumped his ass in the seat, and leaned his elbows on the edge of her desk.  “My psychic powers are telling me I’m in for some cultural re-education, real soon,” he said, watching Mikey stop a few yards away and start dialling. 

“I think so too.  Sorry,” Julia said.  Then she leaned closer and added in a conspiratorial undertone, “It helps to be well oiled when you watch it.” 

He lowered his voice to a confiding drawl he knew a lot of women found sexy.  “Know what scares me about this cultural re-education thing?” he asked.  “It actually works.”  

“Does it?”  She was massaging her injured shoulder with her other hand, and her gaze was a little unfocused. 

“Bastard’s already got me drinking tea.  I’m shit scared I’m going to stick around too long, and wake up one day watching five-day test matches and bitching about Coronation Street.”

“And is that a bad thing?”

“No! That’s _why_ it scares me so fucking much!”  He dropped her a wink. 

Michael came back, flipping his phone up and down in one hand.  “It’s Ava Knox.”

Mikey’s sexy redhead had been asking after him?  Scott rocked on the chair, and gave a little whistle. 

“Sergeant?” Dalton asked, striding back across the Crib. 

“She’s been phoning the Consulate, making a pest of herself.  The Attaché says she can be Twenty’s pest instead, and he’s passed her off to me.”

Dalton narrowed her eyes, weighing up Michael.  “Why did the Attaché pass her on to _you_ , and not _us?_ ’

“Apparently, she wants to talk to me, personally.  And she’s prepared to phone all sorts of inconvenient VIPs to get to me.”

“That one _likes_ you, buddy,” Scott said.  “Hoo-ha.”

“Well, then,” Dalton said, and she rocked on her heels.  “Perhaps you’d better see what she wants, then, Sergeant?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to volunteer to beta this before it goes up, please do. I think it needs it, for Britpicking and continuity-checking.


	3. Two

 

The car rolled to a stop, and Scott hoiked up the emergency brake.  “Here we are, milady, guv’nor’s ball as requested.”

Michael popped the door and got out without a word.  The door clunked closed behind him. “Yeah, we’re not a happy boy today,” Scott sighed to himself.  He got out of the car, slipped his sunglasses on, and had a look around. 

He’d class the place as rural chic.  The road wound between knobbly oak trees and nine-foot walls topped with electric fencing.  The trees were old, and their branches almost met overhead.  It was cool, and quiet, and just about stank of mouldy oak leaves and serious money. There was a wrought iron gateway a hundred yards ahead of their car.  The next door neighbour was almost around the corner, another hundred yards beyond.  Big properties; big money.

On the other side of the car, Michael was also assessing their location, and Scott took the moment to check his partner out under cover of his sunglasses. 

Michael Studmuffin was wearing jeans, topped by that white-shirt-black-jacket combo.  The starched collar of the shirt curved deliciously over the collar of the jacket, sharp and clean-cut, setting off his clean-cut face.  Very nice.  

“Fat pony country,” Michael said. 

“Fat pony?” Scott said.  

“Yes.  My own personal system of economic indicators.”

“Huh. Limeys, go figure.”

Michael leaned his elbow on the car’s roof to explain.  “There are three kinds of suburb.   There’s fat pony country, like this,” he waved his sunglasses around them at the oaks,  “If you find a pony here, it's going to be a fat little Welshie, with a name like Merrylegs, and Pony Club cups on the mantelpiece.”

“Yeah…?”

“And then there’s _sans_ -pony country, and then there’s _skinny_ pony country.  Can afford ponies _and_ keep them fat; can’t afford ponies.  _Need_ a pony, any pony, because you just can’t afford petrol, and that pony is going to be skinny.” 

“Hah,” Scott thought about that.  “Okay, I’ll buy that.  Like boats, right?  Shiny yacht; can't afford a yacht; wormy old dhow you can't afford to replace...” 

“Exactly." 

“Or like hookers!  Lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills; _no_ hookers; and drug addicts from the Phillipines standing on street corners in the rain.”

“It _is_ possible to take an analogy too far, Mr Langley.  Shall we go and ring the doorbell?”

“Yes, we shall, Mr Byers.” 

They got back into the car.  

“’Fore we go, one more thing,” Scott said.  He hitched himself around in the driver’s seat so that he was facing Michael. 

“What?” 

Scott didn’t answer.  He just sent both hands over to the other seat, and gripped Michael’s shirt in his fingers. 

“Oy!”  Michael lifted both hands between Scott’s and broke his grip. 

“Stop wriggling, asshole.”  His hands dived under Michael’s, and got a new grip on his shirt buttons. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”  Michael realized that Scott was undoing his buttons, because he didn’t break his grip again.  He twisted his neck down to stare at Scott’s hands on his shirt front. 

“I’m making you look presentable!”  He undid the next button.  “Show a bit of chest.  Your hair’s too short, you look better with it longer.  But at least you’re wearing nice cologne.  There y’are.  She should go for that.”

“I am not a doll,” Stonebridge protested.  One fist clenched, but the other reached up to his collar, feeling his throat as if was new to him.  “And this is _not_ a date!” he added. 

“The hell it’s not.  Ava Knox likes you.  You need to work that angle."  He leaned back in his seat to inspect his work.  “Naah,” he reached up for Stonebridge’s shirt again, and redid the second button.  “Two buttons open looks desperate.  It's a fine line between sexy and greasy.  There.”

Stonebridge dropped his hands to his lap, and tolerated his touch with the resigned expression of a pony being tacked up – skinny _or_ fat.  

“You happy now?” he asked.  

“Yeah.  Let’s go, Cinderella.”  Scott started the car, and steered it around until it nosed up against the wrought iron gate.  There was an intercom box, and he lowered his window and pressed the button. 

“Yes?”  A female voice, and tinny through the box. 

“Mr Byers, come to see Miss Knox,” Scott said.  He was sure he was being examined through a security camera.

“It’s opening.” 

The gate clanged, and split in half, the two leaves sliding on electric motors.  Scott eased the car through, and steered it carefully up an avenue of oaks and into a cobbled parking area.  He parked the car in dappled sunlight, and they both got out and walked over to the front door.   

Scott heard small dogs yapped at them beyond the door, coming closer.  The front door opened before they could reach it, and Ava Knox stepped out.  A mob of black-and-tan dachhunds around her ankles jumped over the doorstep, and rushed to inspect the visitors.  

Scott took a moment to reassess her.  A redhead, in a red dress.  Nice, _real_ nice.  His first impression hadn’t been wrong – those were _real_ good curves there.  And on the other hand, a redhead in a red dress; she had to have put that on deliberately.  She was making a play for Studmuffin in return.  _The game’s afoot_ , he thought to himself, happily. 

“Gentlemen,” Ava Knox said, stopping in the doorway, and smiled at them both.  “Mr Byers, I believe?” 

“Miss Knox.” Michael greeted her, with a smile.  “And this is my partner, Mr Langley.” 

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, coming forward, and holding out a hand for him to shake. 

Scott stepped forward, ignoring the dachshunds who were sniffing his ankles carefully,  and took her hand.  Her hand was small, but her grasp was firm and warm.  “Likewise, ma’am,” he said. 

“Well, I hope we can get to know each other a little better.  Come inside, gentlemen, please.” 

They were ushered into a hallway, escorted by the dachshunds.  “In here, I think.  Ah, here’s Margie.  Margie is my accountant and … my financial confidant.  Margie, these are the two gentlemen I told you about.  Mr Langley, and Mr Byers.” 

Margie was older, and had ash blonde hair that fell in loose waves – the Farrah Fawcett look. 

“This is some house you’ve got here, ma’am,” Scott said.  He gazed around himself at the whitewashed walls and shiny slate tiles. 

“Thank you, but it’s actually Margie’s,” Ava said.  “I’m just … bivouacking in it, is that the word?” 

“That’s the word, ma’am,” Scott grinned at her. He realized that Mikey was staring at him with a peculiarly fixed gaze; trying to send a message.  

“Would you like to have a look around?”  Margie offered Scott. 

 “Yes, Mr Langley,” Michael said, with heavy cheerfulness.  “Why don’t you go, and have a look at the garden?” 

 _…And fuck off and leave me alone with the redhead_ … Scott could fill in the unvoiced blanks. “Happy to,” he said.  He made sure his middle finger was extended at his side when he turned to follow Margie, where Stonehead alone could see it. 

They walked down the hall, followed by the dachshunds, and out a door into a garden. 

* * *

 

Ava Knox showed Stonebridge into a large sunny living room.  Only one exit door, but it had wide windows that looked out through cloisters onto a garden.  There was another little dachshund here, in a basket on the other side of the room,  watching him steadily with the sombre stare of the very dominant dog.

He sat down, and Ava sat down opposite him, crossing her legs.  “No champagne today, I’m afraid, Sergeant,” she smiled.

“No,” he smiled too.  He tried very hard not to stare too obviously at the way her hips and thighs curved under the red dress.  “I’m actually more of a tea-and-toast man myself,” he admitted. 

“That may be so, but your performance at my little fundraiser was very good, for a novice.  If you ever develop a taste for it, I’m sure the programme could find a use for you.”

“If I ever find myself out of a job,” … _it’ll be because I’ve killed Craig Hanson, and you wouldn’t want me anyway_ …  But he smiled, lightly, trying to hide his grim thoughts.  “…I’ll bear your offer in mind.”

“How was your little trip to Frankfort?” 

She knew about that.  She had contacts of her own.  “Uneventful.” 

“My clean-up operation here has been _very_ eventful.  I should almost say, _too_ eventful.  I’d like to know who wished me to live in interesting times.” 

“You sent a message that you wanted to see me.”

“Yes.”  She looked at him steadily, her blue eyes unblinking as she weighed him up.  “I want to establish a working relationship with Section Twenty.” 

“I’m grateful you want to help.  Any information you have, any insights into your father’s…” 

“Don’t misunderstand me, Sergeant.  I’m not just another useful contact.  I’m offering you an alliance.” 

“An alliance,” he repeated, noncommittally.  

“Your aims and mine co-incide,” she pointed out.

“I thank you, but…”

She raised a hand, interrupting him.  “Please don’t think that I will simply say _Yes Sir_ if you turn me down.  My mind is made up.  It would simply maximise our effectiveness if we work together, instead of tripping over each other.” 

“You’re willing to side with an outsider against your father?”  Knox might have been born British, but she had been born and raised _here._     

“What my father aims to do is appalling, and I am set on blocking him.  And I do have insight into the Knox Foundation – I helped build it, after all.  I have my own resources, my own access into circles you can’t reach.  But you, in turn, have skills that I don’t have.  We can work together.  In fact, I believe that we _must_ work together.” 

She had money.  He had guns.  He knew all about _that_ sort of deal.  He also knew that there was no way in hell that a civilian, even a rich one, would be allowed decision-making power in a military intelligence operation.  MI20 might be independent of MI6, but they weren’t independent of Whitehall. 

Still, better not come out and say so.  “We’re _persona non grata_ in this country.  That might rebound on you.”

She snorted, and flashed him a smile.  “As if _I’m_ afraid of the South African government!”  She flicked her hair out of her eyes with a fingertip, and leaned back in her seat, flexing her shoulders.  “Money talks.”

The dachshund in the corner chose that moment to jump out of the basket – one half of its long body at a time – and stroll over to examine Stonebridge’s boot carefully.  He leaned down and scratched the dog’s ears.  He hadn’t had an animal in his lap for weeks.  Actually, he hadn’t felt had physical touch with _any_ living creature at all, since…

“Can I pick him up?”  he asked, suddenly filled with yearning. 

“Margie prefers that we don’t,” she said.  “He has enough of an attitude as it is.” 

“This little thing?” he asked, disbelieving.  The nose that examined his fingers was cold, but the long ears were as soft as silk. 

“Margie says that dachshunds don’t _know_ they’re that small, until you tell them.”  She smiled and put her head on one side.  “Isn’t that what they say about Special Forces?  It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s…”

“…the size of the fight in the dog, yeah.” 

“Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers.  They’re either little brats, or little tigers.  Margie would rather have tigers.” 

He gave the little dog one last pat, and sat straight up again. 

“I can’t speak for the British government,” he said, carefully, “But I think Twenty and the Knox Foundation can come to some sort of arrangement.” 

“Well,” she smiled, satisfied, “at least, _this_ half of the Knox Foundation.  Every asset I have is at Section Twenty’s disposal.  And I have something to begin our little alliance."

"Intel?"

"Think of it as a business sweetener," she said.  "I’ve been digging into the Weapons Decommissioning Programme here in Cape Town.”

“I was under the impression that most of the Knox holdings were in Johannesburg?” 

“They are, but I’ve handed over control in Joburg to a trusted subordinate, so that I can stay here.  My father was adamant that I should go back to Joburg, which tells me that Cape Town is probably where I _should_ be.” 

“Our analysis agrees,” he said.  _Sinclair_ ’s educated guess, anyway.

“I co-own most of our companies with my father.  Since he hasn’t been charged with any crime, our assets are not frozen, and I can access all the joint accounts, and all the paperwork.  I’ve had my accountant – someone I trust _implicitly_ , Mr Stonebridge – looking over them, trying to find anything out of the ordinary.”

He shook his head.  “Chances are you won’t find anything.  It’ll take a good forensic accountant to dig up the loose ends.”

“A forensic accountant, and _me._   I know this business, Mr Stonebridge.  I helped build it.  No matter how clever the paper trail, I know what should be there, and what shouldn’t.”

He raised his hands, conceding the point. 

“We’ve turned up a massive diversion of resources, into a programme called the Nostromo Project.  The Nostromo Project has no business plan, and no auditable records, but it has its own ring-fenced accounts.  Including this one.”  Ava leaned forward, and placed a folder on the table.  “Rococo Development.” 

He picked it up, and flicked it open.  “What’s in a name?”

“A very, very short-lived software development company.  They were hired by Stellar Arabians for a short period, but I can’t find any details on why.  They were paid out of the Nostromo accounts.  So I dug around, and found some things about the people involved.  Rococo Developments came together for just six months, just for one programme, and then the people involved went their separate ways.”  

He inhaled deeply.  The page had fallen open, at a printout of two Facebook pages.  Two young, tanned faces looked back at him.  His first sight of a potential target?   “Denzil Adonis.  John Simons,” he read.

“They’re both programmers, but nothing to do with horse-breeding.  They’re weapons developers.”

Weapons developers … his memory pinged.  “Any connection to ATAT?”

“Neither of them has ever worked for ATAT, according to their online profiles.  But Adonis worked for Prestige Avitronics, and Simons has a background in Denel.”

“The South African state weapons developers?” he asked.  

“You do your homework, Sergeant.  I’m impressed.  Yes.  And as soon as Rococo Development finished that one job and got paid for it, they  folded.”

“Conrad hired them to build him a weapon.”

“I don’t think he did. I think he hired them to build the _guidance system_ for a weapon.  Anyone can build a rocket and send it up – it’s _flying_ the thing that’s tricky.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“Sergeant,” she smiled slightly.  “I have spent my whole life tracking down weapons all over Africa.  You don’t do that, without getting at least some idea of how they work.”

“I concede your point,” he said.

“It’s not enough just to build a bomb.  You need a delivery system to get it to go where you want it.  And I don’t think my father intends simply popping his toys into a cardboard box and sending them via PostNet.  Do you?”

“Hmm.”  He smiled to himself at the mental image, and closed the folder.  “Scott and I will jump on it with all four feet,” he promised. 

“But that’s all she wrote at the moment, Sergeant.  I’ll let you know if … when… I find anything else. 

He tapped his finger thoughtfully on the folder, and narrowed his eyes.  _Can’t know if you don’t ask_ , he thought.  _Twenty doesn’t need to know._  

“There’s something else you might be able to help us with.” 

“Ask away, Sergeant.” 

“It’s not a military matter, and my superiors don’t know I’m asking.  In fact, I don’t have any business in asking you at all, but…” he smiled slightly, “who dares wins, right?”

“You’re starting to intrigue me.” 

“When we were trying to retrieve Evans’s daughter, we had the help of one of your father’s men.  His name was Curtis Roe.”

“Was?” 

“He paid for helping us with his life.  He was shot during an attempt to rescue Evans’s daughter.”  How strange that no-one seemed prepared to call the young woman by her name, as if even in speech she was insignificant.  She’d been a non-entity, when she’d been the focus of a hostage rescue attempt, and she was even more of a non-entity now.  “His body is in the morgue, and it’s just been identified by the South African Police.”

“I see,” she said slowly. 

“His family wants to repatriate his body, but it seems they can’t afford it.”

“I think I can see where you’re going,” she said. 

“Unaffordable for them,” he said.  “But small change for the Knox Foundation.”

“It’s a bit of a nonsense, though, isn’t it?” she asked, her brows lifting.  She rolled her neck back and shook her head, so that the red mane shook loose.  “Going to all that trouble, just to repatriate a corpse?  It’s not as if he’ll know anything about it.”

“I’m not asking for his sake.”  He cleared his throat.  “Fact is, ma’am, I’m asking on Scott’s behalf.  Curtis was a friend of his – a _good_ friend – and he was killed warning us that we were driving into a trap.  Roe might not know about it, but it would mean a great deal to Scott.” 

“Hmm,” she said, and pursed her lips.  After a moment she smiled.  “I’ll see what I can do.  I have a contact in the South African Police headquarters – I’ll ask him to shake some branches for me.”

“Thank you,” he said. 

She shifted forward in her seat and uncrossed her legs, and he looked away to avoid staring at her legs as she stood up.  He sensed that this meeting was over.  She had said what she wanted to say.  He stood up as well, and stepped back to let her precede him out of the room. 

To his surprise, she didn’t leave the room, but crossed it to stand next to the window.  She looked out of the window, as if there was something out there that was very interesting.  “Sergeant,” she asked.  “I have something to ask you in return.”

“Yes, ma’am?”  He went over to the window.  Outside he could see Scott and Margie in the garden.  As he looked, Scott tossed something blue across the grass.  A flood of dachhunds galloped after it as fast at their stubby legs would carry them. Scott threw his head back and laughed. Scott seemed to be enjoying himself.  He slouched comfortably in the sunshine, his thumbs hooked into his jeans with the casual warmth of a Sunday surfer.  Even from several metres away, and through a window, Stonebridge could almost taste the warmth of that laugh. 

And he was supposed to honey-trap _that_ … Something inside him went _thump_ with the sudden reminder, but the thump wasn’t as painful as he remembered. 

“My father …” Ava addressed her reflection in the glass.  “You should know:  none of this is like him.”

He drew his mind back from his contemplation of Scott’s rumpled shirt.  “No, ma’am.” 

“I don’t know what he’s doing, or why, but … he’s a better man than you think he is. All the work he’s done, all the people he’s helped.  This thing that he’s doing … I can’t believe it.” 

“You’ve seen proof.  He has nuclear weapons, and he means to use them.”

“Yes.”  She flicked her hair back.  “That’s exactly what I mean.  I’ve seen the proof – but I _know_ him.  I can’t see how it’s possible that a man who loves Africa as much as he does can do something like this.”

Conrad Knox was a cold-blooded lizard, he thought to himself.  Lizard is as lizard does.   “Ma’am…” he said, but she turned to face him and raised a hand to forestall him, a hardness in her face. 

“You’ll hear me out, Michael.  I know my father.  He’s a better man than that.  No matter what he now _thinks_ he’s doing…This is not who he is.”   She glanced out of the window again, and leaned one hand on the wall.  “I love my father.” 

“That’s only natural.”  His mind went to his own father.  They didn’t see eye-to-eye on many things, but he tried to imagine his own feelings if his father betrayed his country.  He couldn’t. His father had given his life to his Queen's service, as Stonebridge himself had.  They were soldiers, both of them. 

She spoke to the window. 

“He tried to talk me into joining him.  Tried to make me see the logic in it.  Like convincing an investor.  My father, the hardheaded businessman, trying to talk me into supporting his latest venture.  He sounded so rational, so _reasonable_.    
Except that everything he said was _utterly insane.”_   Her voice broke into a humourless laugh. 

Conrad Knox was his enemy.   Conrad Knox employed Hanson.  Conrad Knox had no redeeming features, as far as he was concerned.  Mad dogs were put down. 

“He is insane.  You know that.” 

“He may be insane, or he may be senile.  I don’t know.  What I _do_ know is what he’s spent all the years of his life fighting to achieve.  His goal is a strong, healthy Africa.  Nothing more, nothing less, and I share that goal.”  

“But you won’t achieve it by building a bomb,” he said. 

“And that’s why it’s so important that he _must_ be stopped.”  Her back stiffened.  She took in a deep breath.  “No matter what he’s doing now, I _know_ what his real beliefs are.  I know what his goals are – his _true_ goals, not this deluded nonsense…  I _love_ my father, Sergeant.  And I will _honour_ him, the only way I can.  By stopping him.”

“We may have to use force.” 

She turned away from the window and looked at him, her grey eyes like stone, and he could see Knox’s determination in them.  “Then you have my blessing to use it.” 

He looked at her, surprised.

She raised her hand sharply,  commanding him.  “Do whatever you have to do, to _stop_ my father.  One way or another.  He must be stopped.  No matter the cost.”  She lowered her hand.  “Do you understand?”

Conrad Knox wasn’t the only one in the family who was as cold as ice, he realized.  He knew what she was _not_ saying. 

“We’ll stop him,” he agreed. 

 

* * *

Scott could see Michael through the window, chatting with Ava Knox.  He kept an eye on them, even as he played with the dachshunds. 

“Your friend has the unhappiest aura I’ve seen in a long time,” Margie confided, when he’d looked at the window for the fifth or sixth time.

“Yeah?” 

“It’s all hard and dark, as if it’s tied up too tightly.”

The squeaky toy came back, and he wrestled it out of the tiny teeth of the victor, and threw it again.  The pack galloped away. 

“You can see auras, huh?”

“Yes.  It’s a talent I’ve always had.”

“Yeah.  I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it the whole aura thing.”

“Oh, really?”

“If you can see auras, how come you aren’t a detective?”

“How do you know I’m _not_ a detective?” she asked. 

She had level brows, and calm eyes.  She was older than he was, but her hair and her body was soft and loose and comfortable.  Older, but he realized he would totally go there, if he had the chance. 

“Huh!” he said, and grinned at her.  “So, what about my aura?”

“Your aura – hmm.  You’re not a good man, are you?  Your aura is dark – but all your chakras are in balance.  You've been damaged, but you're in touch with your spirit.  In self-knowledge lies pain, but also healing.  Not a good man, but not a condemned one, either.”

“Huh,” he said, again.  He bent, and threw the squeaky toy. 

“But your friend over there.  He’s not in touch with his spirit.”

“You can say _that_ again,” Scott agreed.  “Mikey's got all the Emotional Intelligence of that chew-toy.”

“He’s a good man, but he’s warping out of shape, inside and out.  Everything inside him is blocked.  He needs to learn to…” she made a fluid pushing-down gesture with both hands, as if she was swimming.  “Relax, and release.”

“I’m sorta working on that already.”  He didn’t believe in auras, did he?  No.  For all he knew, she was reading something in Michael’s posture.  But the comment helped him make up his mind.  It was going to take time, and it was going to take sacrifices, but Scott had a plan to help Mikey, and he was ready to put it into action.  

“What happened to him?” 

“Somebody murdered his wife,” Scott confided. 

“Good grief!”  She turned to look at the window, as if she could see confirmation in Stonehenge’s back.  Scott turned as well, but the two of them had disappeared. 

“Recently?” she asked.

“You could say that.  The guy who killed her works for Conrad Knox.” 

The dachshunds alerted them to the new arrivals in the garden, by flooding around Scott’s legs and taking the squeaky toy to the feet of Ava Knox instead.  Scott turned, in time to see Michael follow Ava outside into the garden.  The slightly-biggest of the six dogs dropped the toy in front of her, and wagged his little whip tail with delight. 

“Mikey!” Scott said.  He pointed at the dachshunds.  “Look!  Pocket-Rotties!” 

“I think I’ve made a new convert to the breed,” Margie said to Ava. 

“I see,” Ava said. 

“I never took you for a toy-dog person, Scott,” Stonebridge said, in tones of mocking delight. 

“Yo, dude, a dog’s a dog!  You wouldn't get it!” Scott said.  “ _He’s_ a cat person,” he added, for Ava and Margie’s benefit. 

“You make cats sound like a perversion!” Stonebridge complained.

“That’s because it is, Mikey.  What do you think Dalton would say if we brought one home with us as a mascot?”  he asked. 

“I think he’d say, not with British quarantine regulations, you don’t,” Margie said. 

“He’s a _she,_ ” Scott said. 

“And she’ll have you bring the dog straight back again,” Michael said. 

“Oh, dear,” Scott said, mimicking an English accent.  “We’ll just have to nominate one of you fine hounds as our Special Forces dog in Cape Town.  How about you, Spandex?  Hey, Spandex?  You want to be a Special Forces dog?” 

Spandex registered that she was being spoken to, and flipped herself upside down to have her tummy rubbed.  Scott indulged her, scribbling his fingers over the wiry fur.  “Heh, heh,” he laughed to himself.  “Fuck, I miss having a dog.”

 

* * *

 In the car, Magic Mike shut himself down into the glomp-swamps as he drove.  He gripped the steering wheel as grimly as if he was driving an APC across Helmand. 

“Did you get anything out of her?” Scott asked, breaking the silence after a few minutes. 

Michael glanced at him, expressionlessly, and then his eyes went back on the road.  “She wants to help – but on her terms.” 

“Oh, joy: irregulars,” Scott moaned.  “I _love_ irregulars.  They make such a lovely crunching sound when they fuck up your mission.” 

“She’s given us a lead.  Knox hired some men, and she thinks it may have been to build a missile guidance system.”

“Who?”  Scott picked up the manila folder and opened it.  Printouts of two Facebook pages looked back at him.  “Targets?”  he asked, looking closely at the faces in the pictures.  _There’s always another person to kill_ , Rebecca had said. 

“Could be.”  Michael went quiet, and Scott looked up in time to catch the sideways glance he was getting.  “Listen, mate, just between the two of us…”

“Yeah?”

“I asked her for a favour, off the record.  I asked her if she could put up the money to send your mate Curtis back to his family.” 

Scott closed the folder, and gazed at the blank manila cover.  Then he looked up at the road again.  “You didn’t have to do that, buddy.”

“I know.  And she doesn’t have to agree.  But it’s not as if she can’t afford it.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said again. 

“No, actually, I did.”  One hand came off the steering wheel, and pointed in his direction.  “You were right about him, Scott.  He was with us at the end.  We owe him.  And I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me fuck-all, Michael.”

“Yes,” Michael cut him off.  He took his eyes off the road again to look at him.  “Yes, I do, Scott.  Richmond told me what you said to Dalton.” 

“What _I_ said?” 

“Section Twenty chewed Curtis up, and spat him back out again.”

“Oh, jeez,” Scott grumbled. “That place has no fucking walls.” 

“Well, it’s true.  We did.  And that’s just not kosher, mate.  He wasn’t nothing.  He was your friend, yeah?” 

“Yeah.” He remembered Curtis – the jokes they’d had, the training they’d done together, that time in Borneo…

“So this is off the record, yeah?  Nothing to do with Twenty.  It’s personal.”

“Yeah,” he said, surprised.   

“Good.” 

They drove on.  Michael went back to driving his imaginary APC.  Scott watched him. 

“Curtis was my buddy the whole time I was in Delta,” he said, after a while, when the silence needed filling.  He saw the blue-grey eyes blink, bringing Mikey back to reality from where-ever his brooding thoughts had taken him. 

“The whole time?”

“We passed the same selection.”  Scott opened the window, and propped his forearm on the sill.  “Saw some shit together.  Some good times, too.  There’s things I shared with him I haven’t shared with anyone else.” 

“I think I remember you saying he rescued your sorry ass from more catastrophes than I have.” 

“More than that,” he hinted.   

“He’s rescued you _more_ often than that?” 

“No, dumbass.  I mean he was … well, let’s say he did more with my ass than rescue it.  I’m sure I don’t have to draw you a picture.  You know how it goes.” 

Michael frowned without taking his eyes off the road.  “More than rescue it?”

“Yeah.  You don’t share that with a lot of guys, you know?  It’s something special.”  He looked at Mikey, waiting to see when the penny dropped.  “So this thing you asked Ava – it means a lot to me, buddy.” 

“I’m sorry, what am I missing here?”  Michael gave him a puzzled glance. 

Jesus, how fucking obvious did he have to be, to get the idea under that bony buzzcut?   “Oh, come on, Stonehenge!  You’ve been around.  You must have had a few by now?”

“Had a few what?” 

 _Very_ obvious.  “Jesus Christ. I’m sitting here with Anne of Green fuckin’ Gables.”

“All right, fine,” Michael snapped, suddenly all English-cold again.  “Keep your man-of-mystery guessing game, I don’t care.” 

“I’m not playing a guessing game.  You’ve never done the foxhole fandango with another grunt before?  Messed around in the mess?  Never played with Don't Ask Don't Tell?” 

“ _What?_ ”  Michael turned to stare at him, and the car swerved alarmingly.  On the road, a car horn blared angrily. 

“Keep your eyes on the road, dickhead!” 

“Fuck!” Michael swore, and righted the car. 

Scott clutched the sill of the window, his other hand clamping on the dashboard.  “Jesus!”

“Are you trying to tell me you and Curtis Roe … you and Curtis Roe… you were…”  He clearly couldn’t help himself; he glanced at Scott again, and his consternation was obvious.  He didn’t seem to know which was more vital – staring at Scott or watching where he was driving. 

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve _never_ done that?” Scott demanded.  “Seriously?  Never?”

“No!”

“What, not even in high school?” 

“And you _have_?” Michael asked.  He was getting over it, Scott realized; his voice had taken on a more normal tone.

“Fuck, yeah!” Scott replied.

 

* * *

 “News?” Dalton asked, as soon as they walked into the Crib. 

“We may have a lead.”  Stonebridge held up the folder. 

The team gathered around the light-table.  Stonebridge opened the folder and spread out the pages.   He passed out papers to each of them. 

“Ava Knox is willing to help us, but on her terms,” he said.  “She seems to think we’re going to be equal partners.” 

“Not happening,” Dalton said.  

“We may want to think about that,” Stonebridge said.  “She has resources we don’t.”

“She’s too close to the Target,” Dalton refused, adamantly.  “She's emotionally compromised.” 

Stonebridge made a moue, and a sort of horizontal nod, conceding her point.  There was a brief silence, as they all sorted through papers on the light-table, trying to get a handle on what they had in front of them. 

“This isn’t any sort of intelligence briefing,” Sinclair complained.  “This is just a hodgepodge of documents.”

“What, Sinclair, don’t you like it when the amateurs get in on the military intelligence game?” Scott asked, sarcastically. 

“She’s only had two days, so far,” Stonebridge said.  “This is just the stuff she’s found that doesn’t fit.  It’s up to us to figure out how the pieces fit together.”

“This is a whole web.”  Baxter was riffling through pages.  “Accounts, payments, names, companies.”

“She’s given us a lead as a sweetener.”  He put his hand on the two Facebook printouts.  “Rococo Developers.  Two weapons developers, hired by Stellar Arabians six months ago.” 

“Denzil Adonis, and John Simons,” Richmond picked the paper up, and read the names off.  She carried the two pages over to her Primary One, her usual workstation, and began typing away.  “Looking them up.”

“I have Rococo Developers here,” Baxter said.  He held up a page.  “Money transfer to Rococo Developers, one month ago.  And that would be a _sweet, sweet_ price to pay for a webpage.”

“Ava believes that her father is not just trying to build nukes, he’s trying to build some guided missiles to put them in.  She thinks Adonis and Simons were hired to build the guidance system for a missile.  With _their_ CVs, it’s easily possible.” 

“Right,” Dalton said.  “Richmond, I want you looking into Adonis and Simons.  Sinclair and Baxter, you two sit together and try to put Humpty together.” 

“We’re in luck,” Richmond said, looking around from her monitor.  “Adonis just Tweeted where he’s going this afternoon.” 

“I love cellphones,” Scott said.  “They make spying on people so easy.” 

“Where?”  Dalton said. 

“Kalk Bay,” Richmond said.  “He says he wants fresh fish for dinner.”

“Right, we’re on it.”  Stonebridge clapped Scott on the shoulder.  “Back on the job, mate.”

 

* * *

 

The Toyota Corolla crept through the afternoon traffic. 

Stonebridge took one hand off the steering wheel, used his palm to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and then pressed his finger to his radio.  “Zero, be advised, we’ve got heavy traffic here.” 

“ _It’s Saturday afternoon_ ,” Sinclair’s voice buzzed in his ear.  “ _Everyone’s going to the beach._ ” 

“Zero, what’s your position on the target?” Stonebridge asked. 

Richmond’s voice answered him.  “ _Bravo team, we do not have a fixed location on the target.  He’s in the harbour, but the cell coverage is poor, and I can’t triangulate  him_.” 

 _In_ the harbour?  Stonebridge had a brief mental image of his contact tied up to a wharf and floating in the water like a human fender. 

“We’re going to have to go to the Mark 1 Eyeball,” Scott muttered. 

“Copy that, Zero,” he replied to Richmond.  He put his hand back on the wheel.  “Shit,” he muttered. 

“A beer sounds like a really good idea right now,” Scott said.  He was also sweating; the car’s aircon seemed to have died sometime in the last decade, and the cheap tinted windows did nothing to keep the summer heat out of the cab.  

Kalk Bay was a small coastal village, wedged into a narrow strip between sea and mountain.  A tiny fishing harbour was tucked into a shallow snag in the coastline.  The road they were on ran parallel to the railway line, which ran literally feet above the shoreline.  To their right, buildings were stacked up in receding ranks up the mountainside.  To their left – the sea. 

“D’ye think this counts as Bohemian chic?” Scott asked, and then seemed to answer his own question.  “I should bring my mom here, she’d love it.”

The shop windows seemed to stock hand-made clothing and antiques and ‘quirky’ Africana – a tourist-trap for the more discerning tourist.   Further to the south, Stonebridge knew, lay the big naval base of Simon’s Town.  His grandfather and one of his great-uncles had been stationed there, during the War.  Beyond _that_ lay the expanse of the Cape of Good Hope, standing out to sea like a fat hooked finger.  It was a pretty landscape, if you were in the mood for sightseeing – and it seemed as if half of Cape Town was in the mood.  The pavement was crowded with sightseers, tourists, bored teenagers, and the occasional drunk. 

“Shit!” He was forced to dig on the brake pedal as a pedestrian on the pavement launched herself into the road in front of his car.  Luckily for her, they weren’t travelling at any real speed. 

“When you see a space, take it,” Scott said.  “We gotta ditch these wheels.” 

The traffic slid to a stop again.  Stonebridge shook his head, and rested his arm on the window sill.  The sweat immediately began to seep between his skin and the steel. The car ahead of him began to recede, and Stonebridge found the biting-point on his clutch and slid after it. 

“Listen,” Scott said, into the brief silence.  “What I said to you about Curtis?”

“Yes?”  He glanced over at Scott, who was watching him closely with large blue eyes.  His mouth was serious. 

“Just keep it between the two of us.” 

“Roger that.”  He didn’t want to discuss it anyway.  He didn’t want to imagine Damien Scott naked with another man, like some of the pictures he’d seen online.  Those pale naked bodies didn’t gel with his mental image of Scott.   

“His folks don’t know, that’s for sure.” 

“No, of course not.”

He glanced over at Scott. 

Scott hadn’t moved.  He was still lounging comfortably, his back conforming to the hug of the seat, his legs akimbo.  One elbow was propped up on the open window.  He looked just the same as ever; stubbly, scruffy, and very masculine.   There was nothing effiminate about Damien Scott – only Stonebridge’s perspective had changed.  He was aware suddenly that he could smell Scott’s cigarette smoke, lingering on his breath and clothes. 

“Oh, fuck,” Scott gave him a grin. 

“What?” he said, guilty, as if Scott could have read his mind. 

“I can just smell the curiosity coming out of you.”

“It’s none of my business, Scott.” 

“Yeah, but fuck that.   Curtis and me, we were friends with benefits.  It’s not something I do very often, but Curtis was special.” 

“ _Special_ Special Forces.”

“Real special.  I don’t screw around with guys, but Curtis was one of a kind.” 

“Yes, I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“I’m serious, Michael.  I screw around with girls.  So sue me.  But guys are different.  Guys are riskier.  Guys are … a guy has to be something special, for me to stick my neck out.  And Curtis was special.  Shit, I want a smoke.”

Stonebridge wondered if he should wind the window up.  This was as private a conversation as he knew how to have.  He touched his radio quietly, to make sure they weren’t on open mikes. 

“What about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?”

“What about it?” Scott grinned.  “Two guys in the middle of the night in an OP on the border of Burma – who’s gonna know? D’ye think Sinclair will shoot us if we smoke in his car?”

“So it’s not something you do often?”

“Naah.  Curtis was the one who was into it big-time.  I always thought he’d get caught with DADT, but he never did.” 

 “But we met Curtis outside a _brothel_ …”

“Yeah.  One day, Mikey, I gotta take you to this little place I know in Thailand… it’ll blow your hair back.”  Scott took out his cigarettes, put one in his mouth, took out his Zippo, and lit up.  He took a deep drag, and then hung his arm out of the window, with the cigarette dangling between index and middle fingers.  “There, I’m not smoking in Sinclair’s car, I’m smoking out of Sinclair's car.  You’re my witness.”

Stonebridge found himself staring at Scott.  “All this time I thought your life was just one long pussy-prowl, and now you’re telling me you’re …”

Scott waved the cigarette in a little flourish.  “Ta-Daaaa!” 

“What _are_ you, anyway?  Bisexual?”

“Wouldn’t go so far as to call myself bisexual.” 

“But you definitely … um… _went_ with Curtis.”

“Well, okay,” Scott put his head on one side, and took a deep pull on his cigarette, thinking.  “Maybe I’m a bit on the left-hand side of the scale?  I might slot myself somewhere in between the letters LBGT.  Or LGBT.  Or LQBLT, or whatever it is these days.” 

“GLBT.”

“Yeah, whatever.  You, on the other hand,” Scott pointed the cigarette at him.  “You’re not gay, you’re _British_.  You _are_ the B in GLBT.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, you wish.”  He took another pull on the cigarette, and aimed a jet of smoke from his mouth out of the open window. 

“Somebody said you weren’t as straight as you like to let on.” 

“Huh?” Scott seemed genuinely surprised.  “Who?”

“Dalton.” 

“Dalton?  Huh.  Go figure.”   

Stonebridge waited for Scott to hit on him.  He waited for Scott to tease him about his own sex life, or make him an offer he could rebuff proudly, but Scott merely sat comfortably in the passenger seat, and said nothing.  For all the world as if he thought there was nothing more to say.  Maybe there really wasn’t anything more to say, as far as Scott was concerned. 

He sneaked another glance at Scott.  Yes… Scott was just the sort of man to have sex with a man, and regard it as not worthy of conversation.  Scott had sex with as little meaning as Stonebridge had static-line parachute jumps.  Dalton’s order might not seem quite as wildly inappropriate as it had that first night, but he still couldn’t imagine it working out as a means to entrap Scott into staying in Section Twenty.  Sex was just sex for Damien Scott. 

“Space,” Scott said suddenly. 

“What?” he jerked in surprise. 

“Parking space!”

And there was a space, on the side of the road, and Stonebridge could wedge the car in between two other parked cars with a mixture of painstaking care and reverse gear and irritation from the driver behind them. 

“Zero, we are leaving the vehicle,” Stonebridge said, and popped the car’s door.  “Going in on foot.”

They fell into stride together.  The narrow pavement ran between the road and the railway line, and as they walked the harbour’s small basin opened up to their left, the breakwaters guarding a narrow dish of water.  A cluster of buildings stood on the edge of the point across the water. 

“ _Bravo, be advised we don’t yet have a trace on the target, but we’ve identified his car, and we have you on overhead_.” 

“Copy that,” he said, with a hand on his radio.

They turned left and went in through the harbour gates.  The road ran over the railway line, and they found themselves in a haphazard little parking lot, crammed in between a cluster of white walls and the edge of the dock.  It was thronged with people – a collection of fishermen, tourists, and locals, buying, selling, and shouting about fish.  There was a lot of fish; fresh fish, and fried.  

“Zero,” Stonebridge put his hand on his radio, and muttered as if he was talking to Scott.  “Is the target _eating_ fish for dinner, or _buying_ fish for dinner?”

There was a short silence on the radio.  “ _Target Tweet is unclear_ ,” Richmond said, and managed to make the ridiculous communication sound serious.  “ _Repeat, Tweet does not specify_.”

“We’re running a mission according to _Tweets_ ,” Stonebridge sighed.  “ _Tweets_.  If David Stirling could only see us now…”

“If he’s here to buy fish for his supper,  we'll pick him up in his own kitchen,” Scott said.  “If he’s here to eat, we’ve got time to look for him.”

“Fish market first,” Stonebridge agreed. 

They crossed the parking lot, walked between parked cars, and went in under the cover of the fish market. 

As fish markets went, it wasn’t much.  In fact, it was just an open dock on which fish were being sold.  The market ran along the cement quay, open to the air under a long corrugated-metal roof.  It was noisy and smelly and hot, a riot of colours and languages, but nobody paid any attention to the two strangers.  Wet grey fish were being sold from the cement floor, some tied in bundles.  No ice here, no health inspections, but at least the fish were fresh – a boat tied alongside was landing more, tossing them up onto the dock with a wet slap.  A little further along, stout women were gutting and scaling fish on cement-block tables. 

“How’s that look to you, Mikey?”  Scott appeared on his other side, grinning under his sunglasses, and pointing at the nearest fish.  “What d’you say to a couple of _those_ for supper?”

“Bunch of five, boss?” the seller piped up.  “Nice bunch of five Hottentots.” 

"I thought that was a bad word," Stonebridge said, surprised.

"Not the fish, boss; not the fish!" the seller said, as if confiding a deep secret.  "Very nice fish, _mwah!_ " 

“I’ll bake ‘em in garlic and tomato paste in the oven tonight,” Scott said, “with a nice Merlot…”   

“Yes, and if we have to chase our friend down?” Stonebridge said.  “I’d like to see you running down the street with your Glock in one hand and a raw fish in the other.”

“Heh-heh,”  Scott flashed him an amused glance.  He had his thumbs hooked into his belt-loops, and he rocked on his heels.  “I’ll come back for them, dude.”

“Bundle of five?” the hawker said.  “Give you good price.  Thirty Rand for five.  Good price.”

“Naah, I’ve no way to carry ‘em home.  Not yet.”

“Twenty five for five…”

“No. No.” 

The only way to stop a haggle was to walk away, otherwise they didn’t get the clue that the purchaser really wasn’t interested.  Scott swung on his heel, and strolled away.  Stonebridge went with him. They walked through the middle of the bustle like a pair of predators, not speaking, not getting in anyone’s way, but scanning each and every face.  They emerged from the market on the other side, and stood in the sun on the edge of the water. 

“No sign of Target,” Stonebridge signalled Zero. 

“ _Copy that_.”

“You stake out this side corner,” Scott said.  “I’m gonna walk around the restaurants, and see if I spot him.” 

“Wilco.” 

Scott peeled off from his side, and strolled away as if he was just another bored tourist looking at the bobbing wooden boats.  Stonebridge turned his back to the sea, and scanned his surroundings. 

He didn’t stand out as much as he would have expected, in this tangle of faces and races and languages.  And he had a good location to check everyone who entered or exited the harbour parking lot, or went past on the way to the breakwater.  He walked back under the shade of the fish market, and stood searching the faces of the people around him. 

On the nearest cement table, he noticed a woman cleaning and gutting a fish while her customer waited. Her strong hands dug a small sharp blade into the flesh of the fish, economical movements, scaling and gutting.  Her hands were bare, tough as leather, and coated with scales and fish blood.  There was blood on the tables, blood on the floor where the fish lay, blood coating the palms and fingers of the woman.

Blood; always blood.  He watched the sharp movements of the blade.  The woman picked up another fish, turned it over and began scaling it with brisk strokes.  Her hands moved with a mesmerising rhythm, so practiced it was almost elegant, each movement pure economy.  She turned the fish around, turned the blade to meet its belly, and dug the point into the pale skin. 

The blade drew its first long loving stroke, steel biting into soft skin from gills to tail in search of blood.  

The shiver that ran over his skin was like a sudden fever.  The sun was hot, the market was noisy, but he was alone with his secret chill.  The hairs on his neck were erect. 

Blood; always blood. 

Blood, running in Kerry’s shirt.  Blood, on the clothes of the Algerian woman on the bus.  Blood, in the rain outside the Killing House. 

Blood, running all over the bedsheets, soaking down to the mattress, and Kerry frightened and crying with prescient grief. 

Blood, everywhere.  There was blood in everything he did, everywhere he went, and he had brought it home with him.  Blood in his bed, blood in Kerry’s shirt.  He walked through the world tainted by it, poisoned by the blood he had shed, and it was all his fault.  He had carried the contamination home to Kerry... It was his fault.     

“For fuck’s sake!” 

Scott’s voice broke into his dream.  He twitched with shock.  His vision snapped clear again, and he found Scott staring at him.

He was standing in a crowded fishmarket with his soul naked for everyone to see.  “Scott,” he said, suddenly excrutiatingly embarrassed. 

Scott’s blue eyes were frowning at him, his mouth pursed in doubt.  “Why the fuck’re you not responding to Zero?” 

“Zero?” 

Shit – had there been a voice in his ear?  He couldn’t remember.  He didn’t hear it.  He pressed his finger into his ear, but the tiny almost-invisible earbug was still sitting there.  “I didn’t hear,” he said to Scott.

Scott’s accusing stare didn't waver, but he pressed his finger to his shirt, and said, conversationally, “Bravo Two’s having comm failure.”

“ _Brief him and move on, Bravo One_ ,” Dalton’s voice said in Stonebridge’s ear. 

“Spotted our guy,” Scott said, dropping his hand, and breaking his stare at last.  He turned.  “At the fish and chip place, having lunch.  Come on.” 

Scott didn’t seem inclined to mention his lapse, so Stonebridge fell in alongside him, and they strode across the parking lot. 

‘Kalky’s’ was the unimaginative name on the signage: probably not the pinnacle of haut cuisine, then.  The smell of fried fish was sharp. A canopy cast shade over ranked tables.  The tables were covered in cheap plastic, but every single table was full, and he could see a queue of people snaking in through the place’s door.   

“There he is,” Scott pointed with a jerk of his chin. 

Stonebridge looked, and recognised the face they had come here to find. 

Their target sat at a table close to the edge of the dock, taking up almost a whole side of the table.  Stonebridge reassessed his impression he’d got from their pictures.  Denzil Adonis wasn’t obese; merely plump.  Unfortunately, his photographs hadn’t done justice to the fact that he was _also_ about six-foot eight. That was a _lot_ of plump.  

“How do you want to play it?”  Scott asked.

“Good-cop-bad-cop, and a bit of hail-brother?” he suggested.  He felt for his radio, and turned the slider through the fabric of his T-shirt to hot mike.  Zero could listen in and record this conversation.   

Adonis wore a bright green Angry Birds T-shirt that had to be sized XXXL.  His round face looked up as they came up to his table. 

“Hey,” Scott said, strolling up.  “It’s Denzil, isn’t it?” 

“Ja?”

“You want to share a table?”  Scott didn’t wait for a reply, but pulled out a chair and sat down.  “How’s it going?”

“Good-good,” Adonis replied, automatically.  He put a forkful of fish into his mouth and chewed it, as he watched Stonebridge sit down next to Scott.  He was obviously trying to remember who they were, without being rude. 

“How’s the fish?” Scott asked. 

“Hey, you know this place,” Adonis said.  “They do hake like it’s nobody’s business.” 

“We’ll have to try it, hey, Mikey?”

“How’s your friend Simons?”  Stonebridge asked, keeping his voice businesslike.  Even sitting down, he found himself looking up slightly at Adonis. 

“Don’t know, hey.  He’s kinda gone off the map.  Haven’t heard from him since FCBD.”

“FCBD?”

“Uh, Free Comic Book Day?” Adonis said, his brows quirking as if Stonebridge should know that already.

“Oh, Free Comic Book Day, yeah,” Scott said, nodding as if he’d heard of it before. 

 _“The first Saturday in May_ ,” Richmond’s voice said cheerfully in Stonebridge’s ear. 

“I’m sorry, but where do I know you from again?” Adonis asked, unease in his voice.  “Were you guys at the Java conference?” 

“I don’t know,” Scott said, cheerfully.  “Were we at the Java conference, Mikey?”

“No,” Stonebridge said, bluntly. 

“Wait, who are you guys?”  Adonis was starting to get suspicious.  “I don’t know either of you from a bar of soap.”

“You don’t,” Stonebridge said. 

“We wanted to talk to you about Rococo Developers,” Scott said.

“Rococo?”  Adonis said.  “The Knox job?”

Stonebridge stopped, briefly, put off stride by his easy admission.  “The Knox job, exactly.”  He exchanged glances with Scott. 

“I didn’t know anyone else was working on that?” 

“I don’t think anyone was,” Stonebridge said.  “Just you, and your friend Simons.  Who hasn’t been seen since May.  Which is why we wanted to talk to you, Denzil.”

Scott leaned forward, upping his game of good-cop.  “Listen to me.  We work for Ava Knox.  Conrad Knox has gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“He hasn’t been seen for almost a week.  Ava thinks he got himself mixed up with something dangerous.  She’s hired us to put the pieces together.  We need your help, buddy.”

“My help?”

“Conrad Knox is in deep shit with some real nasty people.” 

“Can’t be,” Adonis said.  “He’s Conrad Knox!  Who’d want to hurt Conrad Knox?”

“Go onto Knox’s Twitter account.  He’s gone quiet.  Because he’s missing.  And so has your friend Simons.  And we think it has something to do with the job you did for Conrad.”

“I can’t just…”  Adonis narrowed his eyes as his mind put ‘strangers’ and ‘real nasty people’ together in a twinge of paranoia.  “How do I _know_  you’re working for Ava Knox?”

“Why don’t you call her?” Stonebridge took out his phone, and laid it on the table.  “She’s in Contacts.”

 “Call _Ava Knox?_ ”

“Call her, and ask if she knows Mr Byers and Mr Langley.  You’re recognise her voice, I’m sure.”

Adonis looked at the phone.  “Um…” 

“Go on.  She won’t mind if you call her.  She’ll probably be glad to hear from you.”

Adonis picked up the phone, and turned it over in his hand.  He slid the phone open, and his thumb moved over the screen.  Then he put it to his ear.  “Hello?” he said. 

Stonebridge could hear a female voice on the other side reply. 

“Hi, my name is Denzil Adonis…”  Adonis listened, his eyebrows lifting suddenly as he recognised the voice on the other side.  “Yes, I did… Yes, I know, they’re talking to me now…  No, I’ll tell them everything… Listen, I hope you find your father, okay?  The world needs more guys like him…” 

He turned off the phone and stared at it.  “That _was_ Ava Knox,” he said, surprised.  “I’ve heard her on TV.”

“Do you believe us now?” Stonebridge said. 

“Er, ja.”  Adonis slid Stonebridge’s phone across the table. 

“Tell us about the Rococo project.”

“It’s a rocket.” 

“A guided missile.” 

“No, no.  It’s not a weapon,” Adonis said, shaking his head.  “It’s a humanitarian project.  It’s designed to carry a payload of DDT.”

“ _DDT?_ ”  Stonebridge’s voice went higher than he meant it to.

“Do you know how many people die every year from malaria?” Adonis asked.  “Johnno introduced me to Conrad Knox, and he showed me the graphs.  3000 people a _day_ die from malaria.  And the best and fastest way of killing off the malaria mosquitoes is by spraying DDT.” 

“A rocket with a payload of DDT?” Scott said.  He was scrunching up his face, but it was hard to know if the expression was sceptical, or a struggle not to laugh. 

“DDT is the best prevention against malaria, Knox said to me.  But you can’t use DDT these days,” Adonis explained.  “It’s banned almost everywhere.”

“For good reason!” Stonebridge said.

“Knox said to me, what would you rather have?  Dead birds, or dead children?  The First World doesn’t want the Third World to use DDT, he said, even though it can _save lives._   They’d rather those 3000 people died.  And that’s just _wrong_ , whether its legal or not.”

“So let me guess:  he came up with a plan?” Stonebridge asked. 

“He said he wanted to design a rocket to carry a payload of DDT over the heads of people who would stop it, and release the DDT in the air.  It’s meant to detonate in mid-air, and spread the DDT over a wide area – to spray a whole area in one go.”

“Christ Almighty.”  Stonebridge found himself meeting Scott’s gaze. 

“But what would criminals want it for?” Adonis said.  “Sure, it’s breaking a few laws,  but I don’t see why criminals would be interested.”  

“Or terrorists?” Stonebridge suggested, quietly. 

“Oh,” Adonis said.  He gazed into his plate. “I s’pose I can see why terrorists might want it.” 

“What exactly was your part in it?” Stonebridge asked. 

“I built the guidance and flight system.  Link it to a laptop, programme the target coordinates, and Google Earth and GPS does the rest.”  Adonis gazed over their heads for a moment.  “Johnno designed the interface, and the payload detonation.  We kept it as simple as possible.”

 “Where did you get the specs of the rocket?” 

“Knox gave it to us.  I built my part, and I gave it to Johnno.  We went back and forth a bit, getting the bugs out.  And then we handed it over to Knox.”

“Was that the last time you saw him?”

“No… we met up to celebrate getting paid, and to wrap up the bank account.  And then I saw Johnno at FCBD.”  Adonis shifted.  “Do you think Johnno is all right?” 

“That’s what we’re going to find out, Mr Adonis,” Stonebridge said. 

“We want to see a copy of the programme,” Scott said.

“I don’t have one.”

“Yeah, how about _no,_ ” Scott said.  “I’m not buying that.” 

“One of the conditions of employment was complete secrecy,” Adonis said.  “I gave my copy to Johnno.” 

“Yeah, see, that’s what I’m not buying,” Scott said.  “I know about ITs.  You see a nice bit of software, you make yourself a copy.  I’ve never seen an IT yet who didn’t have piles of bootleg executables and bits and pieces of old freeware lying around, in boxes.  Ripped DVDs.  Ripped DVDs by the _crate_.  You should see our IT.  She has everything before Bill Gates does.”

“ _Ta, ever so much, Bravo One_ ,” Richmond said in Stonebridge’s ear.

Stonebridge backed Scott up.  “And it’s not as if you were working for Denel, yeah?  What’s the harm in being proud of something you made, if it’s going to save thousands of lives?”

“All we want is to have a look at it.”

Adonis picked up a chip and nibbled on it, thoughtfully.  “I might have a copy lying around at home.  One of my own backups.  But it’s not the finished app, just the work in progress.” 

“That’s more like it.”

 

* * *

 Adonis had parked his car in the sandy parking lot.  Scott walked next to him.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Michael following at a distance, scanning the crowds around them with narrow eyes. Adonis walked up to his car, taking his keys out.  Scott peeled off from his side, moving to the passenger door. Adonis beeped the car unlocked. 

“Isn’t he coming with us?” Adonis asked.  He opened his door, but didn’t get in.  Instead he turned his head to look at Michael, lurking on the other side of the parking lot like two hundred pounds of Slender Man. 

“Don’t worry about him,” Scott said.  “He’s got his own wheels.”  He pulled his door open. 

But Adonis didn’t get in on the driver’s side.  Scott heard a man’s voice say, “Denzil Adonis?” 

Warning sirens went off in his head.  He saw Adonis’s bulky body turning, to face a man who was strolling up between cars on the driver’s side. 

“Ja?”

“Cool,” the stranger said.  His hand went into his anorak. 

“Get down!” Scott shouted.

It was already too late.  The stranger’s hand came out, and a gun came out with it.  The gun lined. 

“Wait!” Adonis cried out, and threw out both hands as if to fend off the bullet.  Scott saw the gun in the stranger’s hand buck – _once, twice –_  and Adonis jerked back against the car and collapsed.    

“Fuck!” Scott shouted.  “Target is down!”  He yanked at the Glock in his belt.  It came into his hand, at the same time that the tactical part of his brain told him that he could never aim and fire it in time, not before the gun already lined on him shot him. 

His reflexes threw him sideways.  Glass shattered as bullets smacked through the car after him.  The yellow dirt of the parking lot came up to meet him and he hit it hard with his free hand, his Glock in the other.  In the distance he heard a familiar roar of rage, and the firing of an unsilenced handgun. 

“Fuck me!”  His thumb struck the safety off.  Back!  Flank the bastard around the car’s trunk!  He dived forward from his crouch.  Expecting a bullet any second, he threw himself around the car and lunged upright with the gun already aimed on the enemy’s position.  The space was empty.

“Jesus Christ!” He crabbed around the car’s trunk, his gun lined and scanning the cars around him.  He spared a second to look down. 

Adonis lay on his side on the dirt next to his car.  He was shaking and bubbling.  The front of the cheery T-shirt was black with blood.   

Michael was closing on his three o’clock, his gun scanning the cars.  There were shouts and screams in the distance.  Scott knelt down next to Adonis, letting Michael cover him. 

“Denzil?” 

He reached out,  but he could see that Denzil Adonis was well beyond his rough first-aid. He was shaking, his eyes rolling up to meet Scott’s, and his fingers were pressed to his chest.  One hand scrabbled in Scott’s direction, pleading for help, but all that came out were helpless bubbling noises.  He rolled over onto his back, his eyes searching back and forth in shock and pain. 

Michael was standing over him, taking up a watching stance, his gun up.  “Status?”

“Chest wound.”  Scott thrust his Glock into his belt, and pulled his jacket off his shoulders.  He rolled it and pressed it to Adonis’s chest.  “Contact?” 

“Took off,” Mikey said.

“ _Bravo team, report!_ ” 

“Zero, target is down,” Michael replied over Scott’s head.  “Double-tap to the chest.  Shooter is gone.”  

 “Okay, Denzil.  Okay,”  he soothed, and leaned on the wound.  _Apply pressure… you poor fucker…_ “It’s okay.” 

“You!  Call an ambulance!” Michael roared.  “A man’s been shot over here!”

“Get out of my way!  I’m a paramedic!” he heard a female voice announce above him.  Then a shadow fell over him, and thick arms reached down and met his on Adonis’s chest. Those were competent hands, he realized.  He leaned back and gave her access.  She pulled the jacket away so as to get a look at Adonis’s wound, and then clamped it down again. 

“ _Fuck_ my day off!  What happened?”

“He got shot twice in the chest,” Scott said.  “Point blank.”

“It sounded like a thirty-eight calibre pistol,” Michael said. 

“Willie!” she shouted to someone above Scott’s head.  “Get the kit out of my car!”

“We’ll see if we can catch the fucker,” Scott said.  He climbed up from his knees and pulled the Glock out again.  “Let’s go!” 

“Yeah,” Stonebridge agreed, his eyes small and hard with anger.  His gun was still in both hands, down, but safety off.  He glanced down at the paramedic and then dismissed her from his mind.  “Let’s go get the bastard.”

 


	4. Three

“Zero, we are in pursuit of the shooter,” Scott reported.

“Roger that, we have you on overwatch,” Richmond said in his ear, her voice crisp. 

They took off across the harbour parking lot, zig-zagging between cars.  They were the only souls still moving – the civvies had dropped like gophers.  Here and there, a frightened face was popping up, and then ducking down again, at the sight of Scott and Michael thundering along with their guns drawn.  The shooter had disappeared.

They broke out of the parking lot, and onto the road.  “Go right!” Scott called.  “Cross the rails.” 

There was only one place anyone would go after shooting a man in the harbour.  He would run across the railway line, and escape into the traffic of Kalk Bay.  They stampeded out, keeping pace, eyes scanning, guns drawn.  Scott took a moment to look up and down along the tracks, but nothing was moving there. 

Cross the rails.  Get into the traffic.  Get picked up, and get out of Dodge.  That’s what he would do.

And there the guy was, standing on the corner of the sidewalk.  One hand was jigging up and down in a rapid drumbeat of anxiety,  and his head was twitching this way and that.  Watching the traffic coming up and down Main Road; waiting for his exfil.

…Waiting for an ex-fil that hadn’t pitched. 

“Gotcha, you fuck!” Scott said. 

“Oy!” Michael barked.  “ _Oy!_ ”

The gunman jerked around.  His eyes went round with shock as he saw the two men bearing down on him. 

He was young, Scott saw; his face was unlined.  Barely old enough to drink, let alone kill people.  And he had quick reflexes.  He spun around and launched himself into a sprint along the road. 

“Fuck you!” Scott shouted after him for good measure.  They pelted after him.

Out here, the shots hadn’t been heard.  The sidewalk was crowded with dawdling pedestrians, and their target zig-zagged in between them like a high-speed eel.  They gave chase, but it was harder for two big men to bull through where one slim youth passed easily, and Scott fell back. 

“Guns away!  Mikey, guns away!” he called to Mikey, ahead of him.  Their target had no weapon in sight: if they ran down a public road waving guns, somebody might pop _them_ instead. 

Michael didn’t acknowledge, but he saw him thrust his semi in his belt.  A moment later Michael’s broad back was lost to his view, beyond a family of four dawdling along the sidewalk eating ice-creams.   Scott took to the road to circle around them, in time to see the anorak of their quarry duck between moving cars. He ran across the road, and dived behind the balustrade of a building on the other side of the road. 

“Go left!”  he shouted.  “Mikey, go left!” 

“Get out of my way!” Michael blared. He jumped between cars as well, leaping to the sound of car horns, and dog-legged so as to leap through the gap in the other stream as well. 

Scott followed, diving past the car that had stopped for Michael, and then found himself stuck on the centre-line as Michael disappeared out of sight. The next car trundled past, and a motorbike, and he sprang for the other sidewalk. 

“Mikey!” he yelled, and caught sight of a commotion of people further up the pavement.  He followed.  “Outa my way!  Emergency!  Outa my way!  Police!  Get outa my way!  Outa my way!” 

The corner of his eyes registered agitated passersby in his wake.  Shopfronts, window-dressing, the pillars of the balustrade, tourists with ice-creams and shopping-bags.  He heard the protests from the people he was barging off their feet, but he focused on Michael’s shirt ahead of him.  Michael's white shirt flickered between people, in and out of sight. 

“ _Bravo, report!_ ”

Of course, they were under the balustrade, Zero couldn’t see them from over head.  “In pursuit, northbound!” he barked, and then suddenly the pavement ahead of him was empty, and he could pick up his speed, and narrow the gap between him and Stonebridge.  His shoes clapped the sidewalk.   

But Michael had ever been the faster runner, and he closed on his quarry faster than Scott closed on him, until Scott saw the red anorak appear again between cars.  The target was running across the road again, in the hope of dislodging his pursuers.  He heard horns blare again, and brakes squeal, and dived into the traffic to head their quarry off. 

To his left, he saw Michael crossing at the same time.  Scott saw the target mark the big Brit on his six, and jink right again away from him.  The rabbit was trying to shake off the fox, but there were two foxes, and now he was coming back toward Scott.  Scott pounded up, closing fast.  The target saw him coming, glanced over his shoulder at Michael behind him, hesitated for a frantic dancing second of indecision, and then whirled around, and dived in through an open doorway. 

 Michael sprinted into the doorway on his heels.  

It was the railway station.  Scott followed Michael into the doorway, and collided heavily but spongily with a large woman.  She yelled at him.  He yelled back, and then found himself trying to wade into a oncoming stream of people.  Too many people, heads and shoulders, pushing and bumping, and the space was too narrow space.  “Comin’ through!  Comin’ through!” 

Voices shouted.  He heard Michael’s ringing voice, and above all the other noise, something very big and very loud banged and groaned. A whistle sounded.  

Scott used his weight to force his way through the commuters, and burst back into sunshine again.  He was standing on the railway platform.   In front of him was a battered steel wall of grey and yellow, checkered with windows.  

A train, filled with people, and there was no sign of the white shirt to right or left. 

“Shit!”  There was no time to take stock.  He'd heard that whistle.  The doors were closing.  The train was leaving.  He had to be on that train…

 _JUMP!_   Thump, thump, thump – long strides to cross the platform before the doors closed - and a desperate jump.  A voice shouted, “ _Hey-hey-hey- **hey!**_ ” in rising tones of outrage as he leaped between the closing doors of the train.  

His foot banged down on the floor of the carriage.  The voices shouted, the train jerked, and the doors closed on him from behind.  He was trapped, awkwardly pinned between the doors.  “Fuck!” he shouted, thrashing, beating at the doors with his fists, but he was caught, held between rubber-coated steel, half-in, half-out. 

There were arms coming at him.  Hands took hold of the train doors, wrenching the handles apart.  Other hands grabbed his arms, pulling him forward into safety before he could fall backwards.   

“Jesus _Christ!_ ”  fell out of his mouth. 

“ _Dude!_   You shouldn’t _do_ that.  It’s not _safe,_ ” the youth who’d pulled him from the doors advised, letting go of his T-shirt. 

“Yeah, thanks, buddy, I’ll remember that for next time.” 

He took stock for a second and gulped breaths.  He stood in a long dimly-lit carriage, thronged with people, and muggy with body odour.  The old train was beginning to thump and shudder under him with gathering speed.  Long yellow bench seats lined the carriage against the windows.  Dark faces looked back at him, concern on their faces.  One black woman raised a hand and pointed down the length of the carriage.  She said something to him that he didn’t understand.   

On the other side of the carriage was a steel door to the next carriage.  The door was closing, and through the perspex window he saw the gleam of a white shirt.  “Gotcha!” he said, and took off, lurching at the train’s movement under him. 

“Comin’ through, it’s an emergency.  Comin’ through.”  He gripped rails where he could, moving from handhold to handhold until his balance read the movement of the train. “Let me through.  Emergency.  Comin’ through.”

The door at the end was narrow.  It had closed itself, and he turned the handle, and opened it.  He stepped out onto a narrow step between the carriages.  The stone embankment was rushing along below him.  Sleepers and rails whirred by below too fast to tell.  The two carriages jerked and jumped, rubber connectors squeaking and bouncing against each other. 

One step across to the other door, and he opened it and slipped inside.  Another carriage, identical to the first, just as old and rickety.  It was crammed full of people, many standing, and the noise level was higher in here.  Voices were raised - languages he didn’t understand, but he knew the tone all too well – _International Holy Crap_.  Almost all the people were facing away from him, turning to watch the far end. 

Stonebridge?  On the furthest side of the carriage he could see a knot of people, bobbing heads and raised voices, and suddenly a ringing English roar cutting over the noise.  “ _Get out of my fucking way!_ ” 

There was a scream, and suddenly Scott could see faces.  The mass of people turned back as one and surged in his direction like a wall. 

Shit, had Stonebridge pulled his gun?  In _here?_   _Shit-shit-shit!_

“Let me through!” he shouted, thrusting himself into the oncoming rush of panicked commuters.  Some of them were taller than him, some bigger, and all of them were frantic to get away from that end of the carriage.  He rammed his way through by violent momentum.  “Let me through!” 

Thrust, heave, shove, push, shout… _“Michael!”_

“He’s got a gun!” somebody wailed at him, clutching at his arms like a drowning swimmer – maybe registering the one man in the whole fucking train heading _toward_ the maniac …

 “I fuckin’ _know_ that!” he shouted back.  

By the time he reached the next door he had it to himself.  It was already swinging wide, and he stepped out between carriages again, and into the next one.  He met more of the same, a rush of people throwing themselves to the illusory safety of this side of the carriage.  But this time his passage was easier.  They weren’t rushing to get _out,_ they were simply throwing themselves _down._ He heard a woman wail in terror.  _No time to run!  Just throw yourself down and pray_ …

He stopped, frozen.  Over their heads he could see it all, as if he was an actor on a stage, clear down to the end of the carriage. 

Michael Stonebridge was midway along the carriage.  His back was to Scott, and he was advancing on his prey in a crouch.  Both  arms were braced in a perfect Isosceles, and his head was stooped like a gorilla.  His muscular back was rock-hard with tension.  “Don’t move!” he roared.    

At the far end, their target whirled in front of the door, his face wild with fright.  The door was still closed.  Locked!  His head turned this way and that, looking around frantically for another escape.  Nothing to left, nothing to right, nowhere to go.  No hostages, no weapons, no escape.  And a big man with a big gun, rolling on him like a Panzer.  

_"Don't move!"_

“Michael!” Scott shouted, and started climbing over huddled bodies.  "Stop!"  

But Stonebridge didn’t stop.  He ran forward in his crouch.  The target saw him coming.  The door at his left side was open to the slipstream, a door out of the train altogether, and he looked wildly at it, and then back at Stonebridge _._

_Door… gun… door… gun…_

And suddenly there were gunshots. 

_One! Two!_

The sound slammed at Scott’s ears in the confined space.  The hordes around him spasmed and wailed and pressed even harder against the floor.  Scott could see the slide on Michael’s gun leaping in recoil, the slide racking back with each shot.  “Michael!”  he screamed. He tripped and slipped, and threw himself forward.  

_Three!  Four!_

There were screams under the shots, shrill and painful, a crescendo of fear, and he sprang over huddled bodies. 

_Five!  Six!_

Michael was firing wildly, his aim thrown off by the leaping carriage and his rage.  Bullets whined inside the carriage. 

The target threw his hands above his head, in ducking dance,  trying to writhe away from the bullets smacking around him.  Only one escape route left, only one way to run, and he took it… He threw himself forward towards Michael, hands over his head.  The door was open, freedom flashing by beyond the step.  A leap, and he was gone.

Michael ran forward, his gun lined on the open door.  He paused in the doorway, the wind thrashing his shirt, aimed the weapon out into the air. 

Scott threw himself over the last of the civvies. 

 _Seven! Eight!  Nine!  Ten!_ And the gun’s slide stayed racked.  Empty.

“ _What the fuck are you doing!_ ”  Scott screamed.  He seized Michael’s shoulder, and threw him backwards into the carriage. 

Michael nearly fell.  The gun lined in Scott’s direction over a suffused face. 

“Fuck me!” Scott roared at him.  “Are you fucking _insane?_ ”

The gun sagged.  He saw the grey eyes focus on Scott’s face, saw his confusion as he recognised Scott.  His face sagged, as if he was dazed. 

“For fuck’s sake!” Scott raged.  He knew that look.  He’d seen it before.  He’d seen in in Algeria, when Michael fuckin’ Stoneberserk nearly beat Othmani to death with his bare hands.  Nearly fucked up a mission because he’d gone ape-shit on their target. 

He turned his back on him, and turned to the door.  He gripped the handhold to the side of the door, and leaned out. 

Their target's anorak was a red spot on the rocks, receding into the distance.  The railway line ran literally alongside the sea here, right above the ragged rocks.  Not just a fall from a moving train – but a plunge off the rail reserve onto the rocky shore below.  Easily a fatal fall.  Mission status: fucked to shit.  Target: _splat._

“ _Fuck_ ,” Scott said, with feeling.  He felt for his comm.  “Zero, target jumped off the train.  Target’s gone.”

Michael gripped the opposite handrail, and looked out, but the red anorak was out of sight already, and the train was beginning to slow down, brakes screaming. 

Had someone alerted the driver to the crime-in-progress?  No… a fence appeared, and ran alongside the rails, and up ahead the concrete block of another platform appeared.  They were stopping at the next station.  “Michael!  When the train slows, we jump!” 

Michael was coming out of whatever cloud of insanity he’d been running in.  His face was still slack, but his eyes understood.  Lucid again, but Scott wasn’t ready to trust him yet.  No, sir, he was not. 

The train lurched under them, the brakes screamed, and the platform came nearer.  The passengers were still huddled on the floor – terrified of Michael Stonebridge.  Just the same way the poor boobs on that Algerian bus had been.  What the _fuck_ ; did the asshole have a fucking grudge against public transport, or something? 

“You dumb fuck!” he raged at Michael. 

Michael’s eyes flicked at him, and then away again. 

“Zero,” Scott informed his comm unit.  “We’re getting off the train as soon as it slows.  Need an exit route.” 

“ _Copy that_.”

Brakes were screaming, as the train slowed.  The platform came closer, rushing up to meet them, and Scott readied himself.  The fence around the station flicked by, the train’s side snugged up against concrete, their speed was dropping, and he took a few running steps along the train’s floor and tipped himself out of the open door. 

He landed rolling, absorbing the shock on his shoulder and the curve of his back.  He let his roll soak up his momentum, and scrambled up.

Michael had landed just yards away, already scrambling to his feet. 

“ _We have eyes on you, Bravo.”_

“On me!” Scott barked, and took off.  No ticket-checkers here, just astonished commuters watching them.  Nobody stopped them, nobody did anything but stare at them.  He barged for the gate in the fence, and burst out onto a lawn hemmed by blue sea.

“ _Take a left_ ,” his earbug commanded him.  “ _You need to get out of the area.  You'll find a beach, cross it.  Beyond the beach is a walkway.  Take it._ ” 

“Go left!”  he barked at Michael.  They turned to their left.  Michael seemed inclined to bolt, but Scott grabbed at his shoulder.  “Don’t run, asshole!  Quick march.  Nice and easy.” 

Jumping off the moving train had gained them a few precious minutes to disappear into the crowd.  Running now would only attract more attention.  They crossed the lawn at a brisk walk, went down onto a little pocket of soft white sand, and walked around the edge of the beach.  The people sprawled on the sand paid them no attention.  They found a concrete walkway leading from the far end of the beach, and above the rocky shoreline. 

The walkway ran well below the level of the railway line, and within a few yards, they were out of sight of the beach.  And as soon as he was sure they couldn’t be seen around the winding bends of the walkway, in the privacy between concrete and the sea, Scott grabbed Michael by the shoulder, and shoved him against the wall. 

“What the fuck, Michael?”

Michael had slammed against the concrete, but he didn’t shove back.  Instead his eyes went past Scott, and out to sea.  “He wouldn’t stop.”  His mouth was turned down in a sullen grimace. 

“Wouldn’t stop?  _Wouldn’t stop_?  Where the fuck was he supposed to _go?_ The door was _locked,_ Michael!  But _no,_ you decided to shoot him anyway!” 

“I didn’t shoot him.  He jumped.”

“No shit!  You fired off a whole clip!  You fired off a _whole clip,_ in a crowded train _full of civilians!_   What the fuck were you thinking?”

“He wouldn’t stop,” Michael repeated, mulishly.

“You lost it, Michael!  This is that fucking bus all over again!”

“Don’t get started on me about Othmani again!” Michael barked, anger flaring.  He stepped away from the wall, his gaze snapping to meet Scott’s eyes in defiance. 

“I won’t get started if you sorted out your shit!” Scott barked back, refusing to back down.  “You nearly killed Othmani, you nearly got Evans killed cos you ran after Hanson…”

“I told you, I’m on _top_ of that…”

“Yeah, you just proved _that_ to everyone’s satisfaction… You went and killed...!”  Scott bit off his words as a pair of teenagers with fishing rods over their shoulders came around the bend of the walkway ahead of them. 

Michael leaned back against the wall, and Scott shifted so that the railing of the walkway was at his back.  They let they boys pass between them.  One of the  boys gave him a rather curious glance as he went past, no doubt reading the aggression in his body, but they said nothing.  They waited as the two teenagers went out of sight again.

“You need to sort out your shit, Michael,” Scott told him. 

“I’m trying!” Michael said.  “I’m working on it!”

“Whatever you’re doing to work on it, it ain’t working!” 

“Look, mate, I just need a bit of time.  This thing, yeah?  It’s a bit more than just a bad day.”

“You don’t _get_ to have bad days in this job, Mikey!  You have bad days, and people die.” 

“I can handle this!  Just give me a bit of time.  You have to trust me.”

“ _Bravo team_ ,” Sinclair’s voice spoke in his ear.  “ _What seems to be the delay, gentlemen?_ ” 

Michael pressed his finger to his radio.  “Just a brief tactical discussion.” 

“ _Be advised, law enforcement is on your_ _six_ _o’clock_.”

Michael's comm problems seemed to have magically resolved themselves, thought Scott; not surprising, considering that Michael Stonebridge had been standing there at the fish-market for about five minutes, staring into space like a switched-off robot.  The lights had been on, but there had been nobody home - in the middle of a mission, no less. 

Scott gave him a hard look.  “We’ll talk about this later.” 

“Oh, joy,” Michael gloomed. 

They walked briskly along the walkway, stride for stride, like two old friends on their way to a dinner reservation. 

“ _Local security company is moving to cut you off at the other end.  You need to get over the railway line, and back onto the road.”_

“Wilco,” Scott said.  “Leaving the walkway.” 

“Going over the top,” Michael said. 

He put his hands over the top of the concrete and heaved himself up.  Scott followed, with a scramble of sneakers on slippery cement, and found himself on the railway embankment.  They trotted over the glittering rails, vaulted a steel post-and-rail fence, and reached the sidewalk.  The traffic rumbled by in its placid civilian tracks, oblivious to the two soldiers, and they turned right and headed north along the sidewalk.  

Just two buddies out for a walk together…

“We had better split up,” Stonebridge said.  “Locals are going to be looking for two white guys together.”

“I’ll cross the road,” Scott said.  He cut his speed and fell back, and then crossed to the other side of the road. 

 

* * *

 

“Hmm.  Stonebridge appears to be hearing us again,” Dalton said. 

“Give him a radio check,” Sinclair said to Richmond. 

“Bravo One, are you receiving comms?” Richmond asked into her microphone. 

Michael Stonebridge’s level voice came into their earpieces, clear as a bell.  “ _Zero, Bravo One. I am reading you_ _Lima_ _Charlie.”_

“What the _hell_ just happened?”  Sinclair asked in an undertone. 

In the smaller subsection clipped out from their overwatch, they could see the small figure of Target Two lying spreadeagled.  His red anorak was a bright upside-down T  on the dark rocks.  There was a cluster of other human figures around him – but none of them was attempting to give CPR.  The view couldn’t be more different from the other window, in which Target One was surrounded by busy activity, and the bent backs of two paramedics and a circle of rubberneckers, trying to save Denzil Adonis's life.

“An ambulance has been despatched to pick up Target One,” Baxter said.  “ETA in thirty.”

“Well,” Sinclair said.  “While there’s life…” he shrugged. 

“Major,” Baxter said, looking up from his own station, Primary Two.  “I’m also picking up multiple calls to emergency numbers here on this cell tower.”

“Target Two on the rocks.  Yes, we know.”

“No, ma’am.  Multiple shots fired - on the train.”

“What the…?” Dalton swung on her heel.  “Shots fired?  Richmond, give me Scott, private pipe.” 

“Coming up…”  Richmond said, her eyes darting between screens and her keyboard. 

 “Bravo One,” she said, crisply.  “What happened on that train?”

“ _Target Two jumped out_.”

“Yes, we can see that.  What happened _before_ he jumped out?”

There was a beat of silence.  “ _The carriage door was locked, he couldn’t go further, and he figured he’d take his chances with the laws of physics.  Wait.  Here’s our ride…_ ”  His voice cut out. 

On the overwatch screen, a white rectangle was moving up the road from behind Bravo One.  They saw Scott stop and stick out an arm. 

“They’re catching a minibus,” Sinclair breathed. 

The white rectangle came to a stop.  Bravo One trotted up to it.  Bravo Two, on the other side of the ribbon of road, stopped, retraced his path, and then crossed the road.  The two of them climbed into the white van.

Sound came back into their headphones.  Someone was holding down on their transmit button, turning it to a hot mike.  “ _Where you going, boss?  Where you want to go?_ ”

“ _Any fuckin’ where, buddy!_ ” Scott’s voice was loud and clear – it had to be his radio that was sending.  “ _Where you headed?_ ” 

“ _Capricorn_ _Park_ _…”_

“ _Capricorn_ _Park_ _suits me just fine.  Hey, Mikey, you want to take a ride to_ _Capricorn_ _Park_ _?_ ”

Dalton turned her back on the discussion regarding fares for a minibus from St James to Capricorn Park.  “Sinclair, get yourself to Kalk Bay,” she said.  “Retrieve our Toyota before the police spot it.  We do _not_ want our wheels in Dreyer’s hands.”

Sinclair pulled out his cell-phone, ready to make calls and arrange himself a quick anonymous cab ride. 

“Baxter,” she said, moving to the next face, “Extract from Capricorn Park.  Take the SUV.  We’ll send your location on route.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Baxter said, stripping off his headset and pushing back his chair. 

“And take your covert gear with you.  You’re not bringing the Bravos back here.  You’re taking them straight to Denzil Adonis’s home address.  You’ll provide them with outer perimeter.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Richmond, look up Adonis’s address.  I want everything – overwatch, security system, street view.  Warn Bravo team they’re up for a covert infiltration next.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Adonis’s address?”  Sinclair asked. 

“Adonis wasn’t mugged,” she said, sitting down at Primary Two and pulling up a clone of  Richmond’s overwatch.  She would track the white minibus herself, and keep tabs on the situation in Kalk Bay.  “Knox is cleaning up his tracks.  If he sent one target to take out Adonis, I’ll bet you ten bucks for a piece of string there’s another target already at his home.”

 

* * *

 

 Adonis had lived – _still_ lived, Stonebridge corrected himself – in a very nice block of flats, in a nice neighbourhood.  The block was surrounded by a high wall, and an motorised gate.  A little covered shelter to one side of the gate held a bank of post-boxes, and the bulky indigo figure of a security guard. 

“What’s the infil plan?” Stonebridge asked, from the back seat of the car.  They sat in the Landcruiser a hundred metres down the street, examining the place.  “Over the top, or break in through the gate?”

“No time to wait for dark,” Scott said.  He put away in the glove compartment the tablet they had used to look at the satellite image of the building.  “We play the nice friendly white guys game.”

“Nice friendly white guys…”  Stonebridge repeated, dubiously.

“Yeah.  Baxter, pull up close to the gate, park just there.” He pointed to a spot just a few yards away from the gate.  “And pop the trunk.  Soon as we’re inside, you pull off.” 

“I’ll go around the back and pretend to be lost,” Baxter said. 

Scott got out, and Stonebridge followed him around to the back of the car.  “What’s the nice friendly white guys game?”

Scott opened the car’s trunk, and bent over inside as if digging around inside.  He opened his duffel back, and took out his secret stash of beer.   “Wait and see.  Follow my lead.  We just gotta wait and look busy in the trunk until someone comes around.”

“All right,” Stonebridge said, frowning, but he bent over the car’s back in mimicry of Scott’s posture.  “We’re going to have party?”  he nodded at the beers. 

“Nobody’s drinking my Bud but me.  Here, help me move this stuff around, like we’re packing.”

They didn’t have long to wait.  Another car pulled up, rolling slowly along the road, and made a wide sweeping turn to angle in at the motorised gate. 

“We’re on,” Scott said.  He pulled a plastic bag out of the trunk, and hoisted the six pack of beers in his other hand.  “Close the trunk!” he said to Stonebridge, who decided to carry the duffel bag.  He clunked the back door of the SUV closed, and turned to follow Scott. 

Scott had walked to the side of the motorised gate.  He waited for a moment for the gate to slide open on its hinges, and for the car to roll past him and into the block’s parking lot, and then, as the gate began to trundle closed again, simply walked in.  As they passed the seated security guard, Scott waved the beers at him. 

“Number fourteen!” he said, cheerfully. 

They received a wave.  The guard’s hand barely moved, weighed down with boredom and disinterest. 

“Tell me that’s not easier than jumping over the wall?” Scott drawled under his breath, as they continued deeper into the parking lot – unchecked, unbothered. 

“How did you know he wouldn’t stop us?” Stonebridge asked.  

“In _this_ neighbourhood?”  Scott turned his head to grin at Stonebridge.  “Two white guys, in a white area?  This is Cape Town, buddy.  Stereotypes are _everything_ in this town.”

“Huh,” Stonebridge grunted. 

“We’re just two guys arriving for a party with a buddy on a Saturday evening.  Lying’s real easy when you show people what they want to see.”

They went up a flight of external stairs, along an access balcony inlaid with plant pots, and stopped at a polished brass number 14.   Scott took up a stance on one side of the door. 

Stonebridge put the duffel bag down at his feet.  He stood slightly to the side of the door, shielding his movements from anyone who might look up and see him.  He took his set of lock picks out of his pocket, and slid one into the lock.  A moment’s feeling around told him that the lock’s insides weren’t where they were supposed to be. 

"Hullo."  He stepped sideways, crossing the door to Scott’s side. 

“What?”  Scott asked. 

“It’s not locked.” 

Plastic bag and beers dropped to the floor.  Scott’s 9mm came out, and he took the low-ready stance.  “On me,” he said. 

Stonebridge pulled his weapon out and tapped Scott’s back to indicate that he was ready.  Scott reached across to the doorhandle with his free hand.  He turned it carefully.  “Three,” he recited.  “Two… One…”

And Scott threw his foot against the door a count _early._  

Stonebridge was left behind for a second, but he threw himself in after Scott.  They’d both done this before, hundreds of times, thousands of times, in the Kill Houses of the SAS and Delta.  Scott's back was disappearing into the shadows and Stonebridge was behind him, covering him.  Scott went left, gun searching out ahead of him.  He put the gun into a doorway – right, left, swing around to look behind the door.  A cupboard door banged.  “Clear!”  he snapped. 

Stonebridge leapfrogged him.  He made a button-hook turn into a sitting room.  His gaze registered mess, disorganisation, jumble, but no human figures.  His gun’s sights scanned the room – nothing.  He opened the door to a closet – nothing. 

“Clear!” he said. 

“Clear,” Scott said, behind him, coming into the room, and crossing his track.  

“Going right,” Stonebridge crossed the room as soon as Scott was covering his back.  Bedroom – nothing behind the bed, nothing in the closet, more mess. It took a matter of seconds to clear the whole flat, and to understand what they were looking at.  

“Fuck me, they got here first.”

Stonebridge lowered his gun, letting the brief controlled leap in adrenalin brought on by the search die down again.  As always in a rapid entry, his perception had seemed to both expand and accelerate, darting over his surroundings, and taking in only the vital necessities.  Now he looked around, taking the time to grasp the meaning behind what he was looking at. 

It would have been a nice-looking little place.  Except that the cupboards, boxes and shelves had all been tossed, their contents crashed on the floor like garbage.  He put his hand on his radio.  “Zero.  Location A has already been shaken down,” he said.  “They’ve been and gone.”

“And it looks like they’ve taken every single piece of fucking electronics with them,” Scott gloomed. 

There was nothing left that even looked like computer gear. Empty CD rack, empty shelves, a gaping absence under the TV.  Stonebridge went into the office, but all the equipment was gone from there too, and the cupboards bled empty boxes and drawers onto the floor where someone had ripped out armfuls of stuff.  He went into the bedroom.  Even the clock radio was gone. 

“Zero,” he said to his radio.  “I don’t think these guys knew what they were sent to collect.  They’ve even taken the…”

“Hands up!”  A strong voice barked from the sitting room.  Not Scott’s voice. 

Stonebridge reacted.  A rapid gliding step took him into the corner of the room, next to the door, out of sight.

“Police!  Hands up!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Scott’s voice said.  “Jesus, a _gun!_   Don’t shoot!  I live here! I live here!  Don't shoot, don't shoot!”  Scott was putting out the rapid flustered babble of a civilian who unexpectely finds a gun pointed at his face.  

“Hands up!  Get your hands up!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Whoa, man, take it easy.  Take it easy, okay?  I live next door.  I just got here.  I found the door open.  Please stop pointing that thing at me!”

Two of them, both male.  Stonebridge went still, trying to place them in the room by sound, in case he had to jump them.   
They hadn’t seen Scott’s gun, Stonebridge realized.  And it hadn’t occurred to them that he might not be alone. 

“Keep your hands where I can see them, _boet_.”

“Yeah, anything!  Just stop pointing that thing at me, okay!”

Only one gun was drawn, Stonebridge interpreted Scott’s words.  And without even needing to see Scott’s face, he knew that the moment the gun was lowered Scott intended to jump the cops.  He would be counting on Stonebridge to join the game when he did. 

“This is a crime scene.”

“Yes, I know, I can see that!  I found Denzil’s door open, and I came in to see if something was wrong.  Please, dude, stop pointing that thing at me, it’s making me nervous.”

 One of the cops said something in Afrikaans. 

“ _Ja_ ,” the other agreed.  “Check in the other rooms quick.” 

“What kind of gun is that, anyway?” Scott burbled, his voice lifting with innocent enquiry. 

It had to be done quickly.  Stonebridge took out his gun, thumbed off the safety, and held it ready.  By the sound of it, the cop was checking out the office first.  His footsteps came closer, and Stonebridge saw his shadow block the light coming through the bedroom door.  The cop had moved into the room – but he hadn’t looked around into the corner, hadn’t buttonhooked around the door the way soldiers were taught.  Stonebridge moved.  He slammed his shoulder into the door, banging it aside out of his way. 

He wasn’t a hair too soon; already the police officer was turning, his attention drawn by the flash of movement.  Stonebridge’s butt clipped his head with a solid impact. 

The force of the blow drove the cop down, and Stonebridge simply jumped over him.  He was in time to see Scott close with the second policeman, arms lashing out to twist the gun away.  Then the policeman was flailing, off balance, and Scott was stepping clear, his arms straightening into an Isosceles with the cop’s own gun at their apex. The cop froze when he found himself staring into the barrel of his own gun, whipped away before he knew it was gone.  

“You took your time, Mikey!”  Scott said, his voice back to his usual unhurried drawl. 

The policeman was a plump white man, in the dark blue uniform of the SAPS.  He  looked flabbergasted.  His eyes went from the barrel of his own gun, to Scott’s face, and back to the gun.  Stonebridge watched his face sag into the awareness of defeat, and then settle into a deeper, darker emotion altogether: the certainty of his death.  He gritted his teeth and knotted his fists.  Fuckin’ hell,” he grunted through tight lips. 

Stonebridge felt suddenly sorry for him. 

“Easy, there,” he said.  “We’re the good guys.”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Scott added.

The green eyes narrowed suspiciously, and went to his partner, slumped like a big blue whale in the doorway. 

“… _much_ ,” Scott conceded, editing his own words with a wry tilt of his head. 

“What did you do to Ron?” the cop asked.

“He’s going to be okay,” Stonebridge reassured him.  “He’s just taking a bit of a nap.”  He tried to sound absolutely confident of that.  He was _almost_ sure he hadn’t cracked the man’s skull. 

“This mess wasn’t us,” Scott said.  “We just got here a minute ago ourselves.”

“Officer…,” Stonebridge read his name-tag, “…Whittle.  You seem like an ordinary chap, so let’s be on the level, shall we?  We’re on the same side.  We’re trying to find out who shot Adonis this afternoon.” 

“Really,” Whittle replied non-committally, his eyes still narrow.

“Yes, really.  My name’s Byers, he’s Langley.  We work for British military intelligence.”

“ _British_ military intelligence?” he repeated, and darted a glance at Scott.  “I’m supposed to believe _you’re_ both British?” 

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Scott sighed.  “Don’t ask.  It’s a long story.”

“Do you have any ID?” Whittle demanded. 

“Nothing you’ll believe," Stonebridge shook his head.  "Let’s just start with the fact that you’re not dead, and work from there, shall we?” 

“You don’t look like any gangsters I’ve ever seen,” Whittle said.  He was trying out the idea, but doubt still lingered in his eyes. 

“Here,” Scott said.  He lowered Whittle’s gun, popped the magazine out, and held out magazine and weapon, one in each hand.  “Bona fides, right?”

“Huh,” Whittle said, surprised.  “All right.”  He reached out gingerly and took his weapons back.  He holstered the gun, but put his magazine into his pocket.  “British military intelligence, hey?” 

“Believe it or not,” Scott said. 

“We _knew_ there was something fishy going on,” Whittle said.

“How so?” Stonebridge asked. 

Whittle looked right and left, and then looked at Stonebridge as if weighing him up.  Stonebridge recognised the signs of a man coming to a decision about where to place his loyalties.  He waited. 

“We got told by my station commander to drop what we were doing, and come straight here,” Whittle said.  “Burglary in progress.  When I asked why the Gang Unit wasn’t taking it, I was told – _told_ – that the burglary is definitely not connected to Denzil Adonis’s murder, and don’t ask questions.  Fishy, right?  Ja, you tell me how he knows that when Adonis was only shot an hour ago?” 

“Politics,” Scott agreed.  “You have no idea.”

“Why would the Gang Unit be involved?” Stonebridge asked. 

“They already ID’d the guy who was thrown out of the train.  He was one of the Americans gang.”

“There’s a _gang_ called the Americans?” Scott asked. 

“Ja, I wouldn’t be too proud of that, if I was you,” Whittle said to Scott.  “So.  British military intelligence is investigating Denzil Adonis’s murder?”

“Murder?” Stonebridge looked at Scott, but his raised eyebrows offered no answer.  “Last time we saw him he was still alive.”

“You saw Adonis?” Whittle’s eyes went wide.  “Wait.  You’rethe guys who threw the guy off the train!”

“I didn’t _throw_ him!” Stonebridge corrected, offended.  “He jumped.” 

“But yeah,” Scott said, with a frown at Stonebridge.  “That was us.”

“First gangs, now spooks?” Whittle said, shaking his head.  “This stinks like politics, and I don’t like it.  I joined the police to chase bad guys, not get sucked into politics.  I don’t want to get involved.  I have a family to look after.” 

“You’re not involved,” Scott promised him.  “You didn’t see us.  You just file your burglary docket, and leave the big fish to us.” 

“I can do that,” Whittle agreed. 

“The fellow on the train,” Stonebridge asked.  “What’s his name?”

“Frederick Jeptha, called Daisy-boy.”

“Do you know where he worked?” Stonebridge asked.  “Where he hung out?  Who he worked with?”

“I don’t know anything about him, other than his name.  I just heard the story, you know?  Somebody got shot in Kalk Bay harbour, right in front of all the tourists.  That's all I know.”

“We can find out ourselves,” Scott said. 

By which he meant that Richmond could find out everything they wanted to know.  Police corruption, gangsterism… Conrad Knox’s tentacles had reached further than they had thought. 

“Do you think the Gang Unit is dirty?”  Whittle asked. 

Stonebridge didn’t have the faintest idea.  If the rumours was true, the SAPS was so tainted with corruption not even organised crime could remember which parts were dirty and which parts weren’t.  Most South Africans didn’t even try, and just avoided blue uniforms as a matter of course.

“They’re probably just tugging at the other end of the knot, if you know what I mean,” he replied to Whittle. 

Ron, still lying in the doorway, suddenly moved.  One hand came up to cradle his head, and he groaned deeply – a long rasping complaint, part-pain, part-confusion. 

“Ron?” Whittle said.  He moved around Stonebridge to the doorway, and squatted down to look at his partner.  “Shit.  His head’s bleeding.”

“You should probably take him to the doctor,” Stonebridge said. 

“Remember,” Scott said.  “You interrupted a burglary in progress.  Two guys buffaloed him, and ran off before you could identify them.”

“Right,” Whittle said.  “Ron,” he called, and shook his partner’s shoulder lightly. 

Ron groaned again. 

“Treat this crime scene as if it was your mommy’s house,” Scott told him.  “Prints, records, photos.  Document _everything._   You got to cover your ass with this one.”

“How do I contact you?  If I find something else?”

“You don’t,” Scott said.  “Just keep your head down, and forget you saw us.”

“I can do that,” Whittle agreed.  He stooped to Ron, cupping his head and taking a handkerchief out of his pocket. 

“Time to make like a tree,” Scott said to Stonebridge. 

They left Whittle pulling his radio out, and went out of the flat. 

“Bravo Three, pick us up, front gate.”

“ _Wilco,_ ”  Baxter replied. 

 

* * *

 

 They shared their new intel with Zero on the move, and when they got back to the Crib their officers were waiting for them. 

“Gentlemen,” Richmond said.  She gestured with her good arm up at the big screen, at the picture there.  “Frederick ‘Daisy-boy’ Jeptha, twenty-one.  Late unlamented footsoldier of the Americans.”

“That’s our boy,” Scott agreed, staring up at the face.  It was a police mug-shot, pallid and flat, but he would never forget that face.   “An amateur,” he added.  “Not hired by Matlock.”

“How so?” Dalton asked. 

Scott sat down, and put his feet up. “He went straight for Adonis, popped him, and took off.  If he was military, he’d have taken _us_ out as well.  First me, then Adonis, then Michael.  That’s what I’d have done.”

“If you’d been dumb enough to take out a target on a Saturday afternoon in front of a whole harbour of tourists in the first place,” Michael said.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t,” he agreed.  He’d have used a bomb to do it, if he’d done it himself.  He’d done it before, many times: Randy Andy had taught him well.  But Section Twenty did not need to know that, he decided.  

“And he was a fall-guy,” Michael added.  “He threw away his weapon,  and waited for an ex-fil that didn’t pitch up.  He stood on the corner, as if he was expecting to be picked up.” 

Scott looked closely at him, but he saw no sign that Michael felt guilty about his fuck-up.  No, he realized: he did see a sign.  Stonehenge’s eyes had gone tiny, and his jaw was set like rock.  That marble face was a mask, Scott realized. 

“Poor fucker.  We must have come as a real nasty shock,” he said, and saw the muscle in Stonehenge’s jaw flex.  

“So Daisy-boy was a dupe,” Sinclair said.

“Yes,” Dalton said, and leaned down on the edge of the table.  “But _whose_ dupe?  What’s the connection, between him and Conrad Knox?”

“The Americans are one of the biggest gangs in Cape Town,” Baxter said.  “Could be they have an arrangement with Knox.” 

 “They’re not playing for the same stakes,” Michael pointed out.  “He wants to join the global nuclear club, not control the drug trade in _one_ city.”

“And it’s hard to know what they could offer Knox, when he already has a small army at his back.”

“The connection might be nothing to do with the Americans,” Richmond said.  “Daisy-boy worked as a part-time bouncer for _this_ man.” Another picture appeared on the screen. 

“And _we_ are…?” Dalton asked. 

“His name is Ivan Suvorin,” Richmond said.  “He’s Russian, works in the bouncer business in Cape Town.”

“ _He’s_ not one of the Americans,” Sinclair said.  The middle-aged face that glared at the photographer was pale, heavy-jowled, and unmistakeably _not_ a typical Cape Coloured. 

“He’s not,” Richmond agreed.  “But he’s _very_ cosy with them.  Officially Daisy-boy worked for him as a bouncer, but according to his file, he went back and forth between Suvorin and the Americans.”

“Building their international contacts, by fostering the local talent,” Sinclair said.  “Russian _biznesmeny_ take on local apprentices.  Local gang gets one of their own to pick up the language of the internationals, international gang gets someone who knows the  turf inside out.”

“Hey,” Scott said, “if hiring local subcontractors works for Coca-Cola…”  he shrugged. 

“So who sent Daisy-boy?” Dalton asked.  “The Americans, or Suvorin, or Knox himself?”

“The Americans wouldn’t be ten-thousand men strong, if they got a rep for leaving their own in the lurch,” Baxter said.  “Whoever sent Daisy-boy didn’t intend him to survive.” 

“Knox has _really_ pissed off his American friends, if he’s packed off one of _theirs_ to get killed,” Stonebridge said.

Scott inhaled, and wrapped both arms around the back of his head.  “But what does Knox _care_ if he pisses off the Americans?” he asked.  “We’ve already seen him stomp on Somali warlords, and Algerian terrorists.  This guy doesn’t _care_ who he pisses off.  He had bigger ambitions.” 

“The Americans might not have global dreams,” Sinclair said,  “But the Russian mob is whole other kettle of fish.  They have fingers in pies all over the world.  Getting in at the bottom floor of a brand new African regime might be a juicy new opportunity for them.  Maybe Suvorin thought Daisy-Boy was a pawn worth spending?”

“Knox, Adonis, Daisy-boy, Suvorin,” Dalton said.  “One, two, three, four.” 

“But what’s the connection between Suvorin and Knox?” Sinclair asked. 

“Whatever it is,” Richmond declared, flexing her fingers and turning to her keyboard with the air of a gunner standing to her artillery-piece, “I will find it.” 

 

* * *

  

Michael had gone away to find something to eat for supper.  They were in the middle of a city, and they had the best of all possible field-rations: an expense account.  There was no reason to eat MREs in the midst of KFCs.  Scott saw him off, with his order scribbled on the back of an old cash-register receipt, and then trailed off to find Major Sinclair. 

Stonewall had said nothing about the business on the train.  If he did need to talk, Scott was ready to listen.  _If_ Stonewall needed to talk; which he probably wouldn’t, being a wall and all. 

Scott had come to a realization on the bus in Algeria.  Daddy Stonebridge had been right:  Mikey was a bottler.  He was one of those men who thought feelings were for weaklings, and who therefore pretended they didn’t have feelings, until the feelings they denied they had got completely out of control and become actual weaknesses.  He would deny anything was wrong, until things were so wrong it couldn’t be fixed. 

Somebody needed to tell the dickhead ‘denial’ wasn’t that big wet thing in Egypt. 

Worse: on that bus, in Algeria, Scott had realized something else.  Michael wasn’t just a rage-bottler, he was an _exploder_ – a more dangerous beast altogether.  He’d deny there was anything wrong, squeeze down his anger, compress himself tighter and tighter.  Until the pressure got too high and he went off like Krakatoa on some asshole who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And then it would always be the _other_ asshole’s fault for looking at him funny – or, in Othmani’s case, for ‘jumping’ him.

Something would have to be done.  And Scott knew what he wanted to do; had known, really, ever since Kerry’s funeral.  He just needed to take it slow, and get all his ducks in a row first. 

He found the major sitting in the front seat of the recovered Toyota Conquest, with a morose expression on his face.  “Yo!” Scott greeted, and strolled up.

“You and I have already had words regarding your use of the word ‘yo’ to refer to your superiors,” Sinclair said, mildly. 

“We’ve got a worse problem than ‘yo’,” Scott told him.  He leaned his backside against the side of the hood.  “Michael lost it on that train today.” 

Sinclair brought his head up and gave him a frown through the windshield.  “When you say, _lost it_ …?” he asked.

“He fired off a whole magazine in a train full of civilians.” 

“What?”  Sinclair got out of the car. 

Scott turned to face him.  “We chased Daisy-boy up to the connection between First and Third Class, and the door was locked.  We had him.  He had nowhere to run.  And then Michael lost it, and started banging away like Doc Holliday.  Daisy-boy jumped, to get away from Michael.”

“Why?”

“Fucked if I know.”

“Oh-h-h-h dear,” Sinclair breathed.

“It’s not the first time he’s come unglued, either.  In Algeria, he nearly killed Othmani with his bare hands.  And when we lost Peter Evans…” he stopped.

“When we lost Evans, what?”

Scott shook his head, but he’d already made up his mind to tell Sinclair, and there was no backing out now, for Stonebridge’s sake.  “Mikey left Evans all on his lonesome, because he saw Craig Hanson in the street.  He took off after Hanson, and Hanson was a decoy and that's why Matlock picked up Evans.  Hanson played him like a violin.” 

He had decided he wasn’t going to tell Sinclair about Mikey’s little game with the razor.  That wasn’t an accident, but it might have been a one-off. He wouldn’t have got through the Marines, let alone the SAS, if _that_ was his game, and there wasn’t any point in making the poor schlub sound like an emo teenager for a once-off. 

“Jesus,” Sinclair said.

“I kept my mouth shut about _that_ , but _this_ … It’s becoming a habit.”

“Do you think he’s burning out?”

Scott shrugged, lifting one shoulder.  “Special Forces burns guys out,” he said.  “Not a lot of guys can hack the pace at this level – and those who _can,_ find something solid outside the job to hold onto.  Gotta hang your sanity onto something.  And he’s just lost his solid something.”

“Kerry…?” 

“I think _she_ was his pressure valve.  Always phoning home after missions… listening to her news… _Hey, I shot a guy today, how are the kitchen cupboards coming along, honey?_  Without her, he's coming unglued.  He’s falling apart at the seams like a Hong Kong suit.”

Sinclair shook his head.  “He passed the psych evaluations, Scott.  They cleared him as combat-ready.”

“Hasn't it dawned on you yet that this is the guy who's _overseen_ the psych evaluations for _dozen of_ recruits?”

By the look on Sinclair’s face, that hadn’t occurred to him at all.

“And for fuck’s sake,” Scott went on, “Your people cleared _Hanson_ as combat-ready.  I don’t have a whole lot of faith in your psych evaluations.”

“We’ll have to send him home.  He’s a danger to himself, and to…”

“Yeah, how about _no?_   Hanson is in Cape Town.  Send Mikey home and he’ll just come straight back.  Or he’ll shoot himself.  He’ll fuck up his own life one way or another.”

“You’re _that_ sure of your analysis, Sergeant?”

Scott smiled, but there wasn’t much humour in it.  “What can I say, I’ve always been a people-person.  Yeah.  I’m real sure.  He needs to be here.”

“Keep him here, see him burn out.  Send him home, see him burn out.  Not much of a choice.” 

“We gotta keep him here, close at hand.”

Sinclair closed his eyes.  He ran a hand over his beard, and sighed through his nostrils.   “I’m guessing you have a plan, Sergeant Scott?”

“I’ve got an idea, yeah.”  Scott turned his head and looked Sinclair up and down.  “I can handle him … _if_ I have a free hand.”

“How?”

“I can give him a different pressure valve, and let him work off some steam, before he blows up.”

“How?”

“Don’t ask.  Just leave it to me.  All I ask is that you give me a free hand.  Room us together, and send us out together on missions.  And don’t ask questions, no matter what you see or hear.”

“You’re asking for a lot.”

“For Michael Stonebridge’s sake?”  Scott asked.  “Yeah, I am.  But I can do this.  If nothing else, I can give him something else to think about – something else to peg his sanity on, other than Craig fuckin’ Hanson.”

Sinclair stared at him for a moment, his eyes narrow, weighing up whether or not he should listen.  Then he nodded.  “Very well.  But I’m warning you… if he goes doo-lally again, and someone gets hurt...?”

“Yeah, I know.  On my head be it.”

 

* * *

 

Stonebridge woke up when Scott kicked the bottom of the stretcher-bed with one foot.  “Wake up!” Scott said.  “Julia’s got something.”

Stonebridge sat up, bleary-eyed.  He looked at his watch.  He’d been asleep for almost three hours.  The skylights in the factory’s roof were black, not translucent with sunlight.  It was night.  Scott was already across the Crib, with the others.  Stonebridge stood up and walked after him.

“…and one of those clubs is Manhattans, in Observatory.”

“ _The_ Manhattans?” Baxter asked.  He let out a little whistle. 

“ _The_ Manhattans,” Richmond confirmed. 

“And Suvorin is in there, now?” Dalton asked.

“His cellphone is,” Richmond said.  “The Gang Unit is tracking his cellphone, and I’m tracking the Gang Unit.”

“Bully for the Gang Unit,” Scott said.  He was sitting with his backside on the desk, and one foot propped up on the seat of a chair.  The cool blue lights of the Crib sent cold ghost shadows over his face.  

“Suvorin goes around to all the places his guys work,” Richmond went on.  “He’ll spend a few hours there, and then go on to the next place.”

“Making sure the club owners don't forget who calls the shots,” Sinclair added, a little sourly. 

“We’re going to take this guy out of a crowded nightclub under the noses of his own security?” Stonebridge asked, spotting a flaw in the plan.  “Risky.” 

“We won’t get another chance to get close to Suvorin, without breaking in through his security people,” Scott said.  “They won’t be looking out for a snatch in the club.  They’re hired heavies, not the Secret Service.” 

“And Manhattans is small; not so many civilians to get under foot,” Baxter said.  “But equally, they won’t be willing to have a gun-battle in front of a few dozen camera-phones.”

“Manhattans it is,” Dalton decided. 

“How are we going to get into a nightclub on a Saturday night?” Sinclair asked.

“How d’ye think?” Scott asked.  “We pay the cover charge, just like everyone else.”

Stonebridge found himself grinning.  “It won’t even be the first mission we’ve walked in through the front door.  Remember the Royal Lotus?”

“Maybe I should go instead of one of you?” Baxter said.  “I can pass.”

“Hell, no,” Scott said.  “I need a drink.  You don’t keep a Scott away from a beer on a Saturday night.  And old Stonewall here will pass, easy enough.  _He_ just doesn’t know it yet.” 

“Pass what?” Stonebridge asked.

“I agree,” Dalton said.  “Scott, Stonebridge, get ready.  Richmond, give us whatever you can find on Manhattans.”

 

……………………………..

 

“I still want to know what I’m supposed to _pass_ ,” Mikey said, an hour later, his jaw grim as he drove through the dark streets of Observatory. 

“You’ll figure it out on your own, _Stonewall_.”  Scott smiled, trying to go for a look of benign omniscience. 

The streets were narrow and dark, the grid layout of the suburb laid out like a game of snakes and ladders.  The buildings were up-and-down Victorian shopfronts.  Glass behind chunky colonnades and security shutters flickered the street lights back at them.  Here and there, bright neon picked out a scrap of signage.  The streets were narrow, the corners tight, as only a dinky little suburb from before the advent of the motorcar would be.

“Is it a test?”  Stonewall asked, pulling the car into the next left turn and craning his head under the sun-visor to check that the street sign said what it should. 

“Don’t worry about it, buddy,” Scott reassured.  “You’ve got this one in your pocket.” 

The streets of Observatory were full of Saturday night revellers, but the gods of parking were smiling on them tonight.  Michael  pulled the car into the last empty parking space on the street, about twenty yards away from the place’s front door.  “Can’t ask for better than that,” he said, flicking the car’s headlights off. 

“I’m going to take this as a good omen,” Scott said.  He put his hand on his shirt, felt for his radio with his fingers, and pressed the button.   “Zero, we’re in sight of the front door.” 

“ _Roger that, Bravo One_.”

One of the neon signs glowed across the street, about twenty metres away.  _“Manhattans,”_ curly purple letters announced, above a dark doorway.   Music went _blump-blump-blump_ in the air.  Scott didn’t get out of the car.  Instead he sat back, and watched the doorway for a minute.  He saw nothing to counter the schematic of the place that Richmond had sucked from the Internet. 

Michael didn’t get out either.  He leaned forward, crossed his arms on the steering wheel, and gazed across the street with a forbidding glare.  “Well?  Are we going in, or not?”  he asked, after a minute of staring.

“Let’s just scope the place out,” Scott said.  “Take a minute, get some idea what the clientele is.”

“All right,” Michael said.  He resumed his grim study of the place. 

Scott watched his partner out of the corner of his eye.  As Michael examined the location, a group of young men crossed the street in front of their car.  Young, preppy figures trotted across between cars, and disappeared into the dark doorway. 

He felt for his radio.  “Zero,” he said, “there’s no queue yet, but people are going in.  It’s going to be busy in there.”

Another group went in, all girls this time.  One of them wore camo.  That might be a rather odd choice of outfit for a girl’s night out, he thought, but Stonehead said nothing.

“Notice anything?” Scott said. 

“Popular joint,” Michael said.   

“Yeah, there is that.”  Scott couldn’t help the amusement that leached into his voice, and it gave him away.  He saw Mr Oblivious flash him a suspicious glance, and then stare back at the doorway of Manhattans with fresh intensity. 

Another group, this time of mixed men and women, went in.  The dress code for guys seemed to be a little different here as well.  The guys here dressed up a little more than in London, but Michael still said nothing.  

Scott watched two small groups of men meet on the pavement outside the club’s door, and greet each other with extravagant glee.  Two of the men embraced.  Not a back-slapping man-hug, but a warm, tight embrace.

Mikey was frowning, deeply, at last puzzled by something out of whack about Manhattans, something that didn’t seem quite right.  

The other men went inside, disappearing into the doorway one-by-one.  The two who had hugged stayed outside. One leaned against the edge of the doorway, and they talked earnestly for a few minutes.  And then they leaned together again, and shared another deep hug. 

Straight men did _not_ hug that deeply.  Scott saw Stonewall jerk upright in the car’s seat. 

“Scott,” he said, realization dawning.  “This is a gay club!”

“Hurray!” Scott said, throwing both hands in the air.  “You passed the first half of the test!”

“I’m not going in _there!_ ” Michael said.    

“Target’s inside.  Inside’s where we go.”

“Julia said he’s going on to another club later,” Michael Learns To Complain complained. “We can take him there instead!”

Scott had had plenty of time to get his counter-arguments ready.  He listed off on his fingers the advantages of Manhattans.  “The other clubs are all bigger.  And busier.  This one’s little.  And noisy.  And in a quiet part of town.  This is the optimum location!”

“I’m not going in there.”

Scott decided to use mockery in place of reasoned argument.  “You’re _Special Forces?”_ he jeered, “and you don’t want to go inside a nightclub?”

“Exactly!” Michael said, with a lift in his tone that indicated he’d seized an new excuse.  “I’m a soldier!  I’ll never pass for gay.  Shit, _you’ll_ never pass for gay!  They’ll make us in two minutes flat.”

“Oh, come _onnn_ ,” Scott groaned.  “You’re Special Forces.  Trained in infiltration tactics, intelligence gathering, clandestine HUMINT opera…”

“Not like _that_ , I’m not.”

“They don’t bite, Mikey.  They won’t jump on you just for walking in the door.  Nobody will recognise you,” Scott wheedled. 

He saw the eyebrows come down, and heard, “Humph.”

He was winning, and he decided to cement his victory.  “And besides, I’ll be right next to you, they’ll think we’re together.”

He’d gone a step too far, and he knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. 

“Forget it!”  Michael barked.  He closed his fists around the steering wheel, and set his shoulders.  “I’m not going.”

“This is a mission!”

“No, it is not.  This is _you_ , trying to get a rise out of me, and I’m not playing.  You are a _troll,_ Damien Scott, and I will _not_ feed you.”

“Fine.”  Scott popped the door. 

“Where are you going?”

“Trolling,” Scott said.  He climbed out and slammed the door behind him.  “Asshole,” he grumbled, aware that Michael could hear him through the open window. He was aware of angry eyes staring at his back, all the way across the street, along the pavement, and into the door. 

The doorway was dark, but he found himself facing a flight of steep stone steps, lit with purple LEDs strung under each riser.  The staircase was narrow, so that he could feel the walls on either side of him with his hands as he climbed up.  The music blump-blump-blumped louder as he climbed towards its source.  The landing at the top of the stairs opened up to his left. 

There was a sort of counter/service hatch/hole in the wall, and an open door just beyond it.  Blump-blump-blump, and then the sound faded, and started up again with a faster beat.  He would lose comms once he got in there.  He wouldn’t be able to hear a howitzer over that lot, never mind Richmond. 

“Yo,” he greeted the young man sitting on the other side of the hatch. 

“Ha-zit?” the young man said. 

He’d spent enough time around South African Recces to know that ‘How’s it?’ was a greeting, not a question.  “Cool.  How much?” he asked. 

“Forty bucks.”

He took out his wallet, and counted out some of the unfamiliar banknotes.  “That’ll do it?”

The kid took the notes.  “Ja.”  He tucked the notes out of sight below the counter, and picked up a stamp. 

Scott pulled up his right sleeve, and got a dark egg-shaped blotch on the inside of his wrist above the old Paracord bracelet.  He couldn’t make out what it was, in the dark swollen lighting of the place. 

“You ‘lone tonight?” the kid asked.

“No, but I can’t get my boyfriend to get out of the car,” Scott said.  “He’s so deep in the closet he chews coathangers and shits old shoes.”

That raised a smile. 

“You’re the bouncer here?” Scott asked. 

“No,” the youngster said, waving off the suggestion.  “Just the doorman.  Bouncers are all, y’know…” he gestured with his hand to indicate a horizontal line over his head. 

“Like me?” Scott said, pointing to himself. 

“Like you, ja.”  That got a wider smile than he would have expected.  The kid gave him a brief zig-zag glance over his shoulders and body, and he realized suddenly that he was being checked out.  “Just like you, only _not_ American.  It _is_ American, right?  Not Canadian?”

“Detroit, Michigan,” he said.  “My name’s Langley.”

“Pete.”  They shook hands.

A group of girls climbed up the stairs behind him.   Pete collected cover charges and dispensed stamps.  Scott restrained himself from even looking at the women.  This was one place where checking out the local skirts would be counter to the mission.  He stood back against the wall, and when Pete had finished he stepped forward again.   Pete looked surprised to see him still there. 

“You can go in,” Pete said, when he saw Scott still lurking in the shadows.  “The Cape Town scene doesn’t bite.  Unless you want us to.”  He waggled one eyebrow – just the one, with perfect control. 

He wasn’t being checked out, he realized; he was being _hit on_.  Clearly, he was Pete’s type.  Scott shook his head.  “I’m waiting for my friend to come up.”

A hulking coffee-skinned man in a leather jacket came up the stairs behind Scott.  A colleague, presumably, of the splattered Daisy-boy.  Leather-jacket went straight into the open door without even looking at Pete.

“Now, _that_ was a bouncer,” Pete said, indicating leather-jacket.  There wasn’t a lot of warmth in his voice. 

“I see what you mean,” Scott said.  “Not from around here, is he?” He raised one eyebrow suggestively. 

“ _Hell_ , no.  They’re contracted out.”

More people climbed the narrow steps.  Pete dealt with them, and they disappeared in the direction of the music on a babble of chatter and laughter. 

Scott could smell cigarette smoke.  He could hear music.  He could see the flickering lights of a dance floor.  And Scott was standing out here like a wall-flower, decidedly _not_ having fun.  True, he might never have been to Manhattans before, but standing here in the shadows seemed contrary to his nature.  Music wanted to be danced to, even in as a strange place as this, and he found his foot tapping to the beat. 

“Who do they work for?” he asked, indicating ‘they’ with a wave of his head.

“Guy called Suvorin.  They do security for a lot of clubs.  Why?”

“I might be looking for a job in Town.”

“Ja, _you_ could probably get one, hey?” Pete mused, thoughtfully.  He took another moment to look Scott up and down, considering him.  “You’re not very…”  He paused.  Whatever he’d been thinking of saying, he reconsidered it.  “Suvorin’s here, if you want to talk to him.  They take over the whole top floor.”

“Naah.  Better not interrupt a prospective boss on his night out.”

Pete shook his head.  “Saturday night is business for Suvorin.  Knock on the Staff Only door in the Balcony Bar, tell them Piet Pompies at the door sent you, and go up the stairs.”

It was a pity Zero wasn’t hearing any of this conversation.  He was doing HUMINT  like a champion. 

“I’ll wait for my friend to come in first,” Scott said.  “Or I’ll go down and have another go at talking him out of the closet.”

“You might have a long wait,” Pete warned. 

“I can wait, he’s worth it.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yeah,” Scott said.  He put a playful lilt into his voice.  “ _This_ guy?   _Trust_ me. He’s worth it.  Wait until you see him.”

“I bet he's not,” Pete teased.  “I bet he’s ugly, and fat.”

Scott laughed.  “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks you change your mind the second you see him.”

“Okay,” Pete said.  He raised that remote-controlled eyebrow again.  “Hundred bucks … and a dance?”

He’d just talked his way into a date.  Shit.  Dancing with someone _else_ was not how his grand strategy was supposed to play out. 

“Hundred bucks, and a dance,” he agreed.  “The moment you see him, you’ll understand.  I was in Kuala Lumpur when I met him.  I looked up, and there he was, and I said to myself, Damien, _that_ dude’s got trouble written _all_ _over_ his pretty face.”

That was true.  He had looked up, from the depths of his denigration, and there had been that crisp, clean English face looking down at him.  That wasn’t a moment he would ever forget.

“And _is_ he trouble?” Pete asked.  

“Oh, yeah, I’ve been in non-stop trouble since the day I met him.”  That was also true, he realized: he was giving away more of himself than he intended.  “And he turned out to be military, and you know what _that_ means?”

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”

“Yeah.  Fuck my life.  But this is Cape Town, I said to him.  Come on, who’s going to know?  Nobody knows you from a bar of soap!  Let’s go out and have some fun!” 

“And now you can’t get him out of the car,” Pete laughed. 

“Now I can’t get him out of the fucking car!”  Scott laughed. “Fuck!” 

 

* * *

 

 “ _Bravo Two_ ,” Sinclair said, with the plummy tone of voice that told Stonebridge he was winding himself up for a small localised outbreak of fulminating sarcasm, “ _What seems to be the hold-up?_ ”

Shit.  He felt for his radio.  “Zero,” he said.  “Scott is having a shufti of the door.”

“ _Hadn’t you better go after him, Bravo Two?”_

Shit.  “Roger that,” he replied, and then sighed as soon as the connection was broken.  At least, if he went in there, he had an excuse.  Even if he couldn’t actually declare to anyone in there what his excuse was, because it was all classified from here to Doomsday, at least everyone who mattered knew he wasn’t going in there because he _wanted_ to. 

“Duty calls,” he muttered to himself. 

Scott appeared in the doorway again.  He came out onto the pavement, and stood there for a moment.  Someone else came out with him, and stood next to him.  Both of them stared at the car where Stonebridge sat.

“Zero,” he said, playing for time.  “I have eyes on Bravo One.  He seems to have made himself a new friend.”

Scott’s new friend was tall and loose-limbed, with black hair that fell _just so_ on his brow.  He and Scott stood for a moment, discussing something, and he saw cigarettes being shared.  Scott took out his Zippo, and lit up for his new friend, reaching over and cupping his hands around the stranger’s mouth like a gentleman.  They parted, and stood companionably by the door, puffing away.

Stonebridge immediately hated them both. 

Scott leaned on the wall, took a drag on his cigarette, and waved at Stonebridge with the other hand. 

Stonebridge radioed again.  “Bravo One is waving me over,” he reported.

“ _Roger that_ ,” Richmond replied, with peculiar note in her voice. 

They were probably laughing at him.  If they were laughing at him, they were laughing at his reluctance, not at his going in there in the first place.  His reluctance was making him look as if _he_ had something to hide that the oversexed Scott did not.  

Not that he had anything to hide.  Certainly not.  His duty summoned him in there, that was all.

Scott waved him over again, making exaggerated ‘come here’ gestures with his whole arm as if he was calling a particularly stupid puppy.  Stonebridge gritted his teeth and hissed, “Prick,” under his breath. He got out of the door and slammed it behind him.  He stared at Scott to see if he would laugh. 

Scott did not laugh at him, but he did turn his head, and say something to the young man next to him.  The young man shook his head without a word, took out his wallet, and handed a banknote to Scott. 

_What on earth?_  

Scott grinned, and tucked the banknote into his pocket.  He pushed himself away from the wall he was leaning on, and walked across the street to meet Stonebridge. 

“Thought you weren’t coming,” Scott leered cheerfully. 

“Yes, well, we can’t let you Delta pussies have all the fun,” he said.  He followed Scott across the road, under the interested gaze of Scott’s new friend. 

“Mikey, this is Pete, works as a doorman,” Scott introduced them. 

“Hell- _ooo,_ ” Pete said, cheerfully.

“Pete knows where we can find the dude who runs the bouncers in this place,” Scott said.  “We’ll have a look-around, see if we like it here, and then run up and ask him.”

“Yeah, whatever you say,” Stonebridge said.  He was uncomfortably aware that Pete’s gaze had gone back to Scott, and he was looking at the American in a way that Stonebridge didn’t much care for.  He seemed to be looking at him, as if weighing up his chances, and that just wasn’t kosher, as far as Stonebridge was concerned.  “I didn’t come here to stand outside all night,” he said to Scott. 

“Heh,” Scott said, and grinned at him; the distant little smile that hinted that he saw more than Stonebridge did, and it all amused him to no end.  “Yeah, buddy.”

They went inside, and up a flight of stone steps.  Scott paid his cover charge, and Stonebridge submitted to being stamped on the muscle of his inner arm.  Pete’s fingers were unpleasantly cool on his skin.  They left Pete at the doorway, and went inside. 

The music thumped at his head.  Movement dazzled him.  It was almost dark, the light just a swollen violet glow, and the flashing of strobes made it difficult for him to gauge distance.  He couldn’t tell where he was.  He was deaf and blind, buffeted by noise and movement, and for a moment he was back in the Kill-House in Hereford. 

_Hanson…!_

His breath shortened in his throat, his heart quickening ready for combat, and his attention narrowed to the location of human bodies, arcs of fire… his hand flew back to his belt, feeling for a weapon that wasn’t there.  Rain falling in the dark, shots and lights flashing in the Kill-House, and the awful knowledge that things had gone hideously wrong, that it was all broken, horror, disaster, death. 

 _Hanson…!_   

And Scott was turning around to face him.  Just Scott, thrusting his presence through the vision, and the Kill House disappeared. 

He reached out for Scott’s shoulder like a drowning man, gripping his solid muscle with his fingers.  _Scott, not Hanson._   The sounds that banged at his skull were only music, the flashing light was only a laser display, piercing the smoke above the dancefloor.

_Fucking hell!_

He was on the edge of a dancefloor, pumping with people.  The dancers were silhouettes, unknowable figures moving to the beat.  He was deaf, and almost blind, but Scott was here and his whiskery face was close to his own.  Scott’s mouth was opening and closing, and he inclined his own head closer to see Scott’s lips and read them. 

_Want … drink…?_

He nodded, and finger-spelled a letter C.  Scott pulled away, but somehow his hand was around Stonebridge’s arm, and he found himself being towed along in Scott’s wake.  Coccooned in the fury of the music, hidden in the dark, he let himself be towed, grateful that no-one would have seen his trauma on his face.   

Scott towed him around the edge of the dancefloor, tracing his way between dancers and wallflowers.  He kept his eyes on the back of Scott’s head, trying to shut out the music and regain his equilibrium.  People were dancing to his right, and he glanced at them.  Men dancing, matching rhythm with other men … he returned his eyes to the back of Scott’s head. 

Up next to the DJ, below the flickering of lights, was a doorway, closed off with a long black curtain.  Scott tugged it aside and disappeared through it, and Stonebridge followed him. 

The curtain, translucent as it was, still shut out a lot of the noise.  He stood in a bar-room, with the bar along one side to his right.  The bar stools were full, the scattered high tables to the left were full.  People here too, hanging out, drinking, smoking, shouting at each other over the music.  It might be rather early, but the place was very small, snug almost, so that it seemed to be more full than it was. 

Scott ditched his arm, and made his way to the bar.   Stonebridge found himself alone.  He moved over to the wall and leaned his hips against it casually as if he knew what he was doing.  He watched Scott make his way to the bar, and then examined the people around him. 

Nobody was actually having actual gay sex in front of him.  People were drinking, flirting, laughing, and they all had all their clothes on.  It was nothing like what he’d imagined – nobody seemed to care that he’d never been here before, nobody was forcing him to admit to anything he didn’t want to, and he hadn’t been groped.  It was only a nightclub, much like any other. 

He began to relax.  The only giveaway that he was in a gay club was the dancing on the other side of the curtain… and those hands being held over there… and the fact that the bar-man might or might not have been female.  Or not.  His, or her, piercings threw off his judgement. 

He was coccooned behind the walls of sound, but his lipreading skills, honed by years of training, were up to the task of deciphering at least some of the chatter.  It helped that people were shouting at each other, in each others faces, enunciating every word with exaggerated movements. 

_“…put the exhaust back on as it is, and I’ll come back when I’ve got cash…”_

_“… and then her dog got in my lap… and then it bit my ear…so, ja.  Stitches, fun…”_

_“…I know he was doing, because I caught him at it…  I said to him, if you’re going to do that just get the fuck out of my house …”_

_“… don’t look now, but the blond cream-puff over there is totally checking me out… I said don’t turn around!… I don’t know, I don’t recognise him... God, he's gorgeous…I want that...”_

He ducked his gaze away, appalled and embarrassed.  His face grew hot, and he stared at the posters for stage shows above the bar as if they were exotic paintings. 

The speaker was young and cleanshaven; a bland handsomeness that reminded him of a plastic Ken doll.  Just the sort of face that he’d see on streamed Internet porn videos, and his guilt and embarrassment grew even further.  Not his type.

Scott – familiar, hairy, masculine Scott, thank God! – appeared at his elbow just in time to save him from a full-blown attack of the cooties.  Scott had a long glass of cola in one hand, and a beer bottle in the other.  Stonebridge took the glass, feeling the tremor of iceblocks inside it.  It was cold against his palm, and the bite of it steadied him.  He took a draught.  It was icy cold and sweet, and for the first time he realized that he was really hot.  Sweating, in fact, under his shirt, on fire with sexual embarrassment. 

Scott put the bottle to his lips, and tipped it back for a nice long draught of beer.  His bearded throat clutched at the beer.  Then he lowered the bottle, and turned to lean sidelong against the wall next to Stonebridge. 

Stonebridge jumped slightly as Scott casually slid one hand up Stonebridge’s upper arm and over his shoulder.  He forced himself to relax.  He could do this.  He could tolerate this, as part of their performance.  He was up to this new challenge.  He looked at Scott, at his whiskery jaws and throat, his tanned face and his spiky haircut.  Scott was bristling with strength and vigour, and much more appealing than the man whose lips he’d read.  He could handle this new role, with a man like Scott as his co-performer. 

Nobody was giving him a second glance, anyway, which meant that they were indeed ‘passing.’  He cast another glance to the other side of the room, but the Ken doll had turned away and was in conversation with someone else.  He leaned in towards Scott, and Scott saw him come, and turned his head to present Stonebridge with his ear. 

“Drinking on duty, Scott?” he bellowed.

Scott turned to face him, and toasted him with his bottle.  He leaned forward, and Stonebridge copied his movement, presenting his ear.  “Blending in!” Scott bawled in his ear.  “Do you want to have a dance?” 

 _Dance?_   With Damien Scott?  “Are you kidding me?” he bawled back.  “Fucking no way, Scott!  Never!”

Scott rolled his head back on his neck, and laughed at him.  He felt Scott’s hand give the back of his neck a solid clapping pat. 

Was he being _groped_ by Scott?  Was _he_ being groped, by _Scott?_ He was. 

There had to be a limit somewhere.  He reached up for where Scott’s hand lay loosely on his trapezius muscle, felt for his little finger, and bent it back on itself sharply.  He felt Scott twitch against him, and suddenly the warm arm over his shoulder was gone.  Scott grinned at him, mouthed the word _asshole_ ,  and took another draught of his beer.     

They weren’t here to prop up a wall and check out the scenery – even if Scott was only checking out how many of Stonebridge’s buttons he could push in one day.  They had a mission.  Stonebridge leaned forward again, aiming for Scott’s ear, and again Scott obligingly leaned closer.  “Suvorin?”  he shouted into Scott’s ear.

Scott pulled away and pointed one finger at the ceiling, and leaned in.  He felt Scott’s hand on his shoulder, steadying him and drawing him closer.  “There’s a door, marked Staff Only!” Scott shouted.  “Going to go look for it!”

“Coming with you!”

Scott nodded.  He leaned his arm over Stonebridge’s shoulders, and slid closer slightly.  Stonebridge almost pulled away, but forced himself to relax.  He let Scott steer him through the bar, and back under the curtain.

They edged around the dancefloor. 

According to Richmond’s schematic of the old building, there was another bar area.  In a corner of the dancefloor, sticking out at an odd angle – the club seemed to be the result of a century of haphazard renovations -  was a set of stone steps, leading up to a perspex-panelled door that was set, for no apparent reason, halfway up the wall. 

Scott led Stonebridge up the steps, opened the door, and they found themselves in another bar, that joined the dancefloor catty-corner. 

It was both quieter and cooler up here.  One whole wall had been cut away to form a balcony.  Stonebridge moved over and had a look over the balustrade. 

The drop fell away ten feet or so to a flat metal roof – probably a garage or something.  It was a possible egress, if needed.  The bar looked out over a glorious view of rooftops, and cloudy skies underlit by lurid orange halogens.  The night air was a relief on Stonebridge’s sweaty face. 

They found a table miraculously unoccupied.  Stonebridge set his Coke down neatly on a coaster that advertised a local beer that in his opinion was fit only for Scott’s uneducated Yankee palate.  They looked around them.  The sound here was quiet enough to hear Scott's voice.  “Staff-only door, at your seven o’clock,” Scott said, without nodding in that direction. "We've got it."  

“Time to put our toy together again,” Stonebridge said. 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “Back to the dancefloor?” 

“Dance-floor… oh.”  They could do the handover by cover of darkness. 

He got up, and led the way back to the dancefloor.  The barrage of sound and lights struck him like a bombardment, and he was soon lost.  The people around him were silhouettes, moving to the music, intent only on each other.  Anonymity, here, and nobody would notice that the two big men over there in that corner weren’t really dancing. 

He found a position, just out of the way of the lights, and Scott came up close to him.  Scott more than came up close.  He leaned in, and slid his hands around, and suddenly he realized that Scott wasn’t going to pretend to dance. 

He was up to this challenge, too.  He matched Scott, and let him slide a little closer.  It took a few moments to loosen his limbs and settle into the rhythm of the beat … and it took a few moments more for the contents of Scott’s thigh cargo pockets, his breast pocket, and his left sock to join the various bits and pieces already in Stonebridge’s trouser pockets and socks.

This was business, and he’d trained for it, and so had Scott, but it was still the most awkward thing he’d done all evening. And yet, Scott managed to do it all while not only unobtrusive, but without breaking his rhythm.  His head and shoulders rocked gently to the music, as if he was really dancing, and it was impossible not to join him.  Impossible not to relax into the simple pleasure of dancing with a warm human body in his arms.  It had been so long since he had felt the touch of another living creature.  It had been so long... His neck was relaxing, and he ached to relax further, and let his head drop down to Scott's shoulder.  It had been so long...   

Then he felt Scott’s hand tap his flank, in the ‘go’ signal.  Stonebridge pulled away, breaking the rhythm.  He angled away, heading for the men’s room sign they had both seen. 

A narrow doorway, leading to a corridor.  The corridor had two doors – left and right – and queue of women went into the door on the left.  He pushed the door with the stick figure man on it and went in.  The door slid shut on its hydraulic arm, and clamped out most of the music.  It was muffled to a _bloomp-bloomp_ on the other side of the wall. 

He went into an empty stall, closed the lid, and sat down.  The contents of his pockets came out, some balanced on his thigh, and the smaller pieces set on the top of the toilet-roll holder.  _Bloomp-bloomp-bloomp_ obscured the sounds of the Glock 19 being put back together on his knee. 

He fitted the suppressor to the barrel. Thirteen 9mm bullets went into the magazine, and he put the magazine into the butt, but didn’t rack it.  That noise might just penetrate through the stall door – and whatever else fellows might do in here, he doubted reassembling a semi-automatic pistol was a regular practice.

The idea made him smile, grimly.  He stood up, put the gun into the specially modified holster inside the thigh of his trousers, and made sure that the velcro that held it shut was seamless. Then he pulled the chain on the toilet, and left the stall.  It hadn’t actually been necessary to distribute their toy, in hindsight, since the security on the door had consisted of that idiot Pete hitting on Scott.  Still, here he was, and now that he was armed again he felt like he’d recovered the use of a limb. 

He found Scott, still dancing.  Not dancing with anyone, thank goodness, just shifting happily to the beat, enjoying the music and the laser display.  He jerked his head, and Scott slid backwards off the dancefloor and joined him. 

They went back into the balcony-bar.  The Staff Only door was just a wooden panel, the same deep wood finish as the wainscoting.  Scott knocked on it, and waited.  When nothing happened, he knocked again, harder. 

The door opened, and a man looked out.  “This is a Staff Only-door, _boet,_ ” he said. 

“I know that!” Scott said, putting his foot through the doorway, and using the door’s momentum to bull his way through.  “Piet Pompies on the door said Suvorin was upstairs.”

“Who the fuck are you?”  The man braced himself against the door. 

“I work for Matlock!” Scott shot back at him, indignantly, as if outraged that he wasn’t recognised.  “Where’s Suvorin?  This is urgent.  I gotta see him, like _now_.”

Brash confidence and a name-drop seemed to do the trick.  The man stepped back, letting Scott pass and Stonebridge come in on his heels.  He closed the door behind them, and flipped an index finger over his shoulder at the other end of the corridor.  “Up the stairs,” he said.  “Second right.”

“Great,” Scott said.  “C’mon,” he said to Stonebridge, who followed him up the short corridor.  The corridor ran only a few metres, and turned sharply into another steep staircase.  They climbed up, the music sinking to a muffled thump through the walls.  

The first right was an open door.  Stonebridge followed Scott, keeping far enough back to keep an extra look-out.  As he passed the open door, he caught a brief glimpse of the room that made him stop short, and hiss, “Scott.”

There were two men in the room, leaning over a table.  The table was piled high with gadgets and electronics, black insulated wires spilling in kinked coils, disks glittering.  They were sorting through it.  

Stonebridge’s heart was thumping in his chest.  Fight, flight, or lie like crazy, and either way he would have to go in headfirst and move fast.  The challenge made the adrenalin flood through his muscles. 

He turned into the room, and knew that Scott was on his heels in support.  “Oy!  Is that the stuff from Rosebank?” he barked, drawing irritation into his voice, and digging a finger sharply in an aggressive point at the table. 

The abruptness of his arrival made the two men jerk upright.  “Who the fuck are you?” one of them grunted.

“We’re with Matlock,” Stonebridge said, coming further into the room so as to give Scott a clear field to throw his knife. 

“Who the fuck’s Matlock?” 

“He’s Toufeeq’s boss,” the other man told his companion.  “The American guy.” 

Interesting: just who might ‘Toufeeq’ be?  They had another name to go on with, Stonebridge thought. 

“What the fuck are you doing with that stuff?”  Stonebridge demanded, pointing at the table with an angry jabbing finger.  “We’re supposed to take it away with us and destroy it!”

“Hey, no!” the second man protested.  “This is good stuff!”

“You can’t keep it,” Scott said.  “It’ll bring the heat down on Suvorin.”

“We were going to format it!”

“Format it!” Stonebridge burst out.  “ _Format it?_   What are you going to do with the DVDs?  Fuck, I don’t even know why you brought it here in the first place!  You’re supposed to get rid of it, not bring it back here like a big pointing sign saying _Suvorin did it!_ ”

“Pack it up!” Scott said, waving his hand at the stuff at the table urgently – the hand that didn’t hold the knife.  “Pack it all up, and we’ll take it and dump it.  Jesus!  Bringing that stuff here!” 

“What’s wrong with bringing it here?  Suvorin told us to!” 

“Didn’t you hear?” Stonebridge threw up his hands, like a sarcastic teacher.  “Situation’s changed!  Daisy-boy isn’t coming back.  He got his arse thrown off a train in Kalk Bay, and the SAP is going to be looking for a connection between Suvorin and Toufeeq. The shit has hit the fan!”

“And that stuff needs to _go_ , ASAP, before the cops get here,” Scott finished for him.

“Daisy-boy’s _dead?_ ”

“Shit!”  The two of them started gathering the stuff in armfuls, and the first one picked up a black rubbish bag and flicked it out to open it up.  The other began stuffing electronics inside. 

And _still_ nobody had seriously questioned who they were…!  Stonebridge was running on pure adrenalin, but a quiet part of his brain noted that Knox’s conspiracy was beginning to grow itself out of internal cohesion.  One name was enough to open the door, and the fact that their faces weren’t familiar hadn’t raised any alarms.  Just how many people did Nostromo have on its payroll? 

“We’re going to talk to Suvorin.”

“He’s next door.”   

“We know,” Stonebridge said.  He turned and left the room.  He led the way to the next door.  This one was closed.  He exchanged glances with Scott, who took up his position on the other side of the door and nodded that he was ready. 

Stonebridge knocked. 

“Come in,” a male voice inside rumbled. 

He turned the doorhandle and went in. 

The room was an office, the sort that he’d seen in a hundred small bars and restaurants.  There were three men there, sitting around the desk.

As soon as their faces turned toward the door, he knew they had got as far as they were going to get with bullshit. 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Four

The face on the left was deeply tanned and low-browed.  Stonebridge knew that face, but he had never met him.  Scott had met him, and the meeting must have been memorable, because Dieter Hendricks’s eyes were lighting up with recognition. 

“That’s Dam- _ien SCOTT!_ ” Hendricks shouted, throwing his chair back and shooting to his feet.  One arm shot across his body and under the front zip of his jacket. 

There was no time.  Already the pale blocky man in the middle of the table was pushing back his own chair, his squat face looking up at them.  Stonebridge put his hand to the gun in his pocket and yanked the gun through the Velcro.  The long barrel came up.

It happened fast, just a simple swing, but it seemed to take forever, time slowing so that he even had time to compare his movement with Hendricks’s.  He watched Hendricks shove himself back from the table, his hand coming out of his jacket with a gun of his own. The two guns raced each other up to firing position. 

He fired as soon as he was lined.  The suppressed gun went _Pfut!_ but the recoil was a hard slam into his hand.  Hendricks flapped back against a wall of fat admin files, the gun falling. 

The Glock lined on its own, hand and eye cooperating without instructions from his brain.  “No you don’t,” he snapped.  The little valley of the backsight cupped Suvorin’s chin, and the foresight lifted to meet it.  “Stop right there!”

Suvorin was half up, his hands pressing down on the table, but he froze.  His eyes were zoomed in on the barrel of Stonebridge’s Glock. 

“Hands where I can see them!” Stonebridge shouted.  “Up!” 

Slowly, Suvorin’s hands lifted from the table.  He raised himself to his full height. 

“Knew I made an impression on you, Dieter, pal.”  Scott’s drawl from behind him was dry.  Scott crab-stepped around the table to where Hendricks lay half-sitting against the bastion of paperwork. 

Hendricks had both hands pressed to his shoulder, and he was gasping.  He half raised his head as Scott kicked his gun away, and then let it droop again with a curse.  “ _Fuck_ ,” he grunted.  “You, _again?_   You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”  

Scott stooped, and scooped up Hendricks’s gun. 

“Beretta,” he said.  He popped out the magazine to have a look at how many bullets were in it, and then rammed it back.  “Nice.  Thanks, buddy.”  He aimed the Beretta at the third man, who was huddled on his knees in the corner and making _don’t-don’t-don’t_ sounds.  “You!” he barked at the third man.  “Sit there, and shut the fuck up!  _Capiche?_ ” 

Stonebridge stared over the Glock’s barrel at Suvorin.  In person, the Russian’s face was even heavier, and sagging with malice.  “Who sends you here?”  he demanded.  “Chinese bastards?”

“We’re not here for a fucking chat!  Come here!” Stonebridge said.  

“Fuck you,” he spat.  His eyes were marbles of hatred, buried in sagging grey flesh.  He wasn’t a man, he was a troll; he was Jabba the Hut.  But he was moving, at least; straightening his back slowly, stiff with rage.    

“Around the table,” Scott barked.  “This side!  Keep your hands where I can see them!  You, I said _shut up!  Shut up!_ ”   

They had to keep the noise up, keep the pressure on, and keep their victims dazed and compliant.  “Come here!” Stonebridge barked. 

Scott backed up, keeping his distance as Suvorin came around the table, stepping over Hendricks. 

“Turn around!” Stonebridge said.  “I said turn around!” 

Suvorin turned, slowly, his eyes darting this way and that.  “You from the Chinese?” Suvorin demanded.  “What you want?”

“Cover me,” Stonebridge said to Scott, and Scott dropped away so he had a clear LOS of the room.  Stonebridge put the Glock into the back of his belt, reached into his pockets and pulled out his plastic cuffs.  He reached across to Suvorin’s hands and pulled them behind him so that he could loop both wrists in the plastic cord, and snugged them tight. 

The third man had fallen silent, in the corner.  Stonebridge shot him a glance.  He was hugging the floor, clearly terrified, but wise enough not to attract attention. 

“We’re not from the Chinese, pal,” Scott said.  “We’re from your worst Goddamn nightmare.  Who sent Daisy-Boy to bump off Adonis, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Suvorin spat.  He twisted around to glare at him over his shoulder. 

Stonebridge was closer to him, and he knew Suvorin couldn’t grapple for the Glock with his hands bound behind his back.  He pulled the man closer and aimed the barrel directly at his head.  “Who sent Daisy-Boy?”  he barked.  “ _Who?_   You?  The Americans?” 

“Fuck you.”  Suvorin shook slightly, but he turned his head and stared back.  The shake was part terror, part resolve.  There was no sight in the world as terrifying as a gun barrel millimetres from one’s forehead, but the shaking was shallow, laid over a bedrock of hatred.  “Fuck you.” 

Stonebridge pressed the gun closer so that the muzzle shoved hard against his temporal bone.  “Who?  Who was he working for?” 

“We’re not going to get anything from this asshole, Mikey.  Yo, Dieter.  Why the fuck are you riding around with this guy?” 

“Fuck off and get hit by a bus, Scott,” Hendricks groaned.  Blood was running over his fingers. 

“Come on, man.  You’re a pro.  You know the shit this guy’s into?  Why’re you into that?” 

“Fuck you!  You know how long it took me to get out of that _kak_ hospital?  Two fucking months!  And you killed my Principal!” 

“Hey, _we_ didn’t kill Crawford,” Scott said, but he kept the Beretta lined on Suvorin as if it was laser-guided.    

“So?  You know who’s going to hire someone for Close Protection if everyone knows you lost your Principal?  Fucking _no-one_ , man!”

“You know the shit this guy’s got you into?”  Scott said.

“A job’s a job.”    

For some reason Scott seemed to think Hendricks was a source.  Stonebridge didn’t see it, at all, but he was willing to let Scott follow his hunch.  He held the Glock on Suvorin. 

“His previous boss was a slimy arms dealer,” Stonebridge said over his shoulder, without taking his attention off Suvorin’s hate-filled eyes.  “I don’t think he cares, Scott.”

“Hey, times are tough,” Hendricks said.  “I gotta use what I know!  Sorry if that gets up your nose, but some of us don’t have the luxury of being fussy.”

“You’ve got to use what you know?”  Stonebridge focused on Hendricks.  He backed away from the bound Suvorin so that he could stare at Hendricks’s face.  “What’s with that?”

“Nothing.”

“Hah.  You have got to use what you know,” Stonebridge repeated.  “What _you_ know is weapons.  You’re not CP for our fat friend here; you’re his insider into the arms trade.  Tell me I’m wrong.” 

“Fuck you.  You _shot_ me!”

“You’re right, Mikey.  He worked in the arms trade for Crawford, he’s working in the arms trade for Suvorin,” Scott chimed in.  “Weapons Decommissioning Programme, my ass.  We’ve hit the jackpot with our fat pal here.”   

“You,” Stonebridge focused on Suvorin again.  “Move.  One squeak out of you, one signal, and I’ll shoot you in the spine.”

“Been awesome chatting to you, Dieter, old pal.” 

“Fuck off and get shot already, Scott,” Hendricks said, weakly.  “I’m fucking bleeding here.” 

“You, ahead of me.”  Stonebridge sidestepped around Suvorin.  “Scott, take point.  The door.” 

Suvorin glowered, but he moved.  He stepped slowly between Scott and Stonebridge, and Scott moved to the door.  Scott readied the Beretta, and put his hand on the door handle.  He turned around to look Suvorin over.  “We’re going to slide on outta here, all friendly.  One squeak out of you, and… _wait._ ” 

“What?” Stonebridge paused. 

“Why does this asshole look happy all of a sudden?”

“Happy?”

Suvorin’s eyes came up, and the corners of his mouth twisted in a sickly leer, wet lips over yellow teeth.  “Stupid soldiers.  Stand and talk.”

“Fuck.” 

“There’s a panic button under the desk,” Hendricks said, without much interest.  He sounded exhausted.  "You missed it."  

There was a brief little pause.  

Scott turned his head.  “Are they coming?”

“Maybe they didn’t hear it?” Stonebridge said.   

“My men are in next room," Suvorin promised.  "I kill you, I kill your family, I kill your wife, I kill your…”

The anger soared.  A solid knot of hatred closed in his stomach like a cement fist, shaking the sense out of him. 

“ _I will fucking kill you for that!_ ”   Stonebridge roared at him. 

He lunged, the gun leading the way like a shark, homing in on Suvorin’s throat.  His vision had narrowed to the gun’s foresight, and Suvorin’s face.  He was shaking, the foresight trembling with the current, his blood pulsing. 

“Mikey, whoa, whoa, whoa!”  Scott was next to him, interjecting his shoulder. 

Stonebridge aimed the Glock past him, over Suvorin's shoulder, and Suvorin fell back, startled by his rage.  “I’ll kill this fucker right here!” 

“Let’s get him outta here before his guys get here!”

Let Suvorin’s backup come! Stonebridge would kill them all, and he’d kill their boss right here.  He could hear Scott’s voice, and understand his words, but all that mattered was Suvorin, and smashing his rage out against that face.  Suvorin’s face was sagging with dawning dismay. 

“You not shoot me!” Suvorin said, frantically, as if words were defence.  “You need me!”

“I _don’t_ fucking _need_ you!”  Stonebridge lunged, closer, and the Glock was against Suvorin's face, the foresight snug against his cheekbone.  “ _Nobody_ fucking needs you,” he hissed, through clenched teeth.  

“Mikey, take a deep breath.  Listen to me, Mikey!  Give him a minute. Take it easy.  Give him a minute…”

Stonebridge could feel Scott’s hand on his chest.  “Get out of my way, Scott.”

Suvorin’s courage was gone, evaporated.  He squirmed against the door, trying to escape the barrel against his head.  “Stop him, stop him!  He crazy, he crazy!”

"Just tell us what we need to know!” 

“I’m going to kill you," Stonebridge promised.  Suvorin’s eyes were wide, staring, echoing into his, and he wanted to smash those eyes out of existence.  Pebble eyes, and they were all he saw, as if he and Suvorin were alone in the room.  

The pebble eyes rolled in Scott’s direction, seeing in Scott a saviour.  “Stop him!” 

“Talk!” Scott ordered. 

“I can’t talk!” 

It was easy to give orders, Stonebridge thought; not so easy when the gun was lined on your face.  He felt his contempt soar.  "I'm going to blow out your knee," he hissed.  He lowered the barrel and pointed it at Suvorin’s knee.  His teeth were clenched so tight they hurt. 

Suvorin buckled.  “No, no, no!” 

“I don’t think he wants to hear _no-no-no_ ,”  Scott said.  “Who sent Daisy-Boy?  You?  The Americans?”   

“I send Daisy-Boy!  I send him, kill Adonis!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why!  I get order.   Toufeeq give order and I do.  I am just worker!” 

“Where’s Toufeeq now?”

“I don’t know, he contact me!” 

“What is he building?” 

“I don’t know!  I don’t know!” 

“Then why is _he_ here?” Scott jerked a thumb at Dieter.  “Left knee, Mikey!”

The barrel dropped again.  He growled in satisfaction.   

“No-no!  There are four of them!  Rockets!” 

“Rockets?  Where are they?” 

“I don’t know.” Suvorin looked at Stonebridge.  “I don’t know!  True!  They not in Cape Town but I don’t know where!  I just middle-man.  People ask me to do things, I arrange!  Mob, _biznesmeny_ , Toufeeq, what difference?  They ask, I find, find fuel, find aeroplane, find helicopter, find gun!”

“You don’t know shit,” Stonebridge growled in disgust.  “You’re just a go-fer for the Mob.”

“We got what we need,” Scott said.  “Time to roll.”

“I’m not done yet.”

“Yeah, you are.” Scott clapped his shoulder. 

“I want to…” 

Scott took the decision out of his hands.  He stepped up to Suvorin, raised the Beretta, and brought down the gun’s butt in a hard clapping blow on the side of his head. 

Suvorin collapsed, hitting the floor like a Bergen of meat. 

“There!  Now snap out of it, Michael!  We have to move!” 

He shook himself.  “Yeah.”  He moved to the door, and waited. 

“You,” Scott said.  “Stay down.  Soon as we’re gone, you call an ambulance for Dieter!” 

The third man in the room had stayed silent through the whole thing, on his hands and knees.  He nodded, a rapid vertical bobble, eager not to be misunderstood by the two men with guns. 

Scott snatched up the laptop from the table as an afterthought. 

“Taking point,” Stonebridge announced.  If there was going to be shooting, he wanted to do it.  The blood was still racing in his veins, pumping hard. 

“On your six,” Scott replied, behind his captured Beretta. 

“Going out,” he said.  He threw open the door, and hooked around the jamb.

Two figures in sight, closing on his position down the corridor.  Armed, two guns coming up: targets.  The Glock in his hand kicked – _One! Two!_ _Three! Four!_ – and the two targets tumbled down. 

“Guess they didn’t hear the panic button,” Scott said behind him.  They were the two gangsters who had been in the room sorting through Adonis’s stuff.

Their blood spattered the wall, and hung in the air, the old butcher-shop smell of battle.  Blood, _always blood_ , and he wanted to spill _lots_ of it.  He was under control again, but the anger pulsed deep in him.  Now was not the time for emotion, though.  Now was the time to push his feelings down and out of sight.  His actions were precision-drilled by years of training, and emotion would only make him wobble.  

He sprang forward, leaped over their bodies, pausing to kick each gun spinning down the corridor.  “Going forward,” he said. 

“On ya!” Scott replied. 

He moved quickly down the corridor, retracing his steps.  If the two of them had called a warning there could be more coming up the staircase any second. 

“Going left,” he said to Scott.  He ducked into the room with Scott covering him from the doorway.  The two gangsters had stuffed the stolen electronics back into the black rubbish bags, and he picked up both in his left hand.  He shifted his grip on the Glock for one-handed firing.  “Good to go,” he reported.

“On me,” Scott said, leading down the corridor.  The music from below them went _bloomp-bloomp-bloomp._  

“Going down.” 

Stairwells were a high-risk location for a firefight, with more chance of ricochets and more blind angles.  Stairwells made any soldier’s blood pressure rise, but he coasted on the surge of adrenalin like a shark.  He went down the stairwell on Scott’s heels, eyes and gun darting this way and that. 

Clear.  What a pity. 

The corridor below was empty.  Scott flowed down it in a quick crab step, covering the doors as they passed.  Stonebridge followed.  The guard was gone, missing – had he heard the shots?  Was he in hiding?  Had he fled? 

They had reached the door on the far end when the guard cleared up the uncertainty himself by opening a door and sticking his face out.  Scott spun in his direction to deal with him, but the guard was faster.  A whoop, and he flung himself backward.  The door banged.

“Fuck!” Scott shouted.

The guard would call the alarm.  Go in through the door and finish the guard?  They’d have to blast in there, guns blazing.  He’d have a gun, and the angle of the door to cover him, and he’d have a prepared and familiar position – no good.  Getting out of the door and into the crowded bar beyond a wall of people as soon as possible – better. 

Tactically better, anyway.  What a pity. 

Scott’s mind was working as quickly as Stonebridge’s.  He glanced at Stonebridge and tucked the Beretta into the back of his pants.  “We go,” he said, smoothing the back of his shirt down over the bulge at his backside. 

Stonebridge turned his back to Scott, covering him from the guard’s reappearance, as Scott opened the door.  The sound of music ramped up as the door opened, and Scott went through.  Then Stonebridge was able to back out of the door, with the gun held low against his belly.  He pulled the door closed in front of him with one finger freed from the neck of the black bag.  He turned around, keeping his right hand between Scott and the wall, and slid the Glock into his concealed holster.  His fingers smoothed the Velcro over it so that it could be easily grabbed free again.

_Ga-ga, Ooh la la, Want your bad roh-oh-mance…_

They made their way through the press of bodies, thrusting and shoving.  The lights were still down, and the music still thumped.  The balcony bar was more crowded than it had been earlier.  People still laughed and drank around them, their arrival changing nothing, the fight above signifying nothing. 

The shots hadn’t penetrated the volume of the music. 

Across the room, a big man in a leather jacket appeared in the doorway to the dance floor.  He stopped, and Stonebridge could see understanding dawn on his face even in the dim light.  “Go,” he said, tapping Scott’s back.  “Go, go, go.”

Scott took off, pushing his way heedlessly through the bar, as LeatherJacket started pushing his way across the floor towards them.  Squawks of displeasure rose from drinkers, but Stonebridge could spare them no time.  LeatherJacket realized where they were going, and changed his approach to cut them off. 

Then the balcony was here, and LeatherJacket had just one table in his way, and Scott was at the balustrade.  Scott put one hand on the wall and vaulted over.  Gone.  LeatherJacket was closing fast. 

Stonebridge waited a beat for Scott to get his feet under him and tossed the bag over the balustrade for him to catch.  He turned to follow, setting his hand on the top of the balustrade.  He made a jump, ready to vault, but instead he was yanked backwards off balance.  He turned.

LeatherJacket had him by the back of the shirt.  He dragged Stonebridge back, and his fist slammed in towards Stonebridge’s face.  Stonebridge blocked the blow on his forearm, almost by instinct, and turned to break LeatherJacket’s grip on his shirt with a vicious elbow-hook.  LeatherJacket’s face was full of rage.  There was another man closing up on Stonebridge’s side – the guard from the corridor – and his hands were closing fast.  He was reaching toward Stonebridge’s throat. 

Hand-to-hand combat – no guns.  There had been a firefight upstairs, but as far as these men knew it hadn’t happened.  Their  priority was stopping him without making a scene.  As far as these men knew, he was a man who _could_ be stopped by a pair of bouncers…

_Better end it quickly._

He twisted around.  LeatherJacket’s blocked punch had flown off to Stonebridge’s side, and his flailing arms were in CorridorGuard’s way.  They were fouling each other. 

Stonebridge threw his hand up, the heel of his hand snapping up under LeatherJacket’s guard to thud into his nose.  The blow jerked LeatherJacket upright, his head whiplashing back, and Stonebridge switched his focus to CorridorGuard, still closing.  

Guard’s hands were reaching out, his eyes were angry, and Stonebridge matched him.  He turned so that his right side was out of reach.  Guard grabbed for him, and Stonebridge let him grab the front of his shirt, and then turned his own left arm over Guard’s in a way that locked his elbow and trapped his arm.  He heard Guard squawk with shock as he was trapped and yanked off balance.  Guard twisted around, instinctively pulling to free his arm, and Stonebridge cupped his own right arm around the back of Guard’s neck to bow his head down.  He brought his knee up into the man’s face, hard. 

Guard collapsed. 

Stonebridge checked that there were no more of them.  LeatherJacket was flapping like a fish against the base of someone’s bar stool.  Guard was on his back.   The crowd was beginning to make a flap.  It was time to go.  Stonebridge put his hand on top of the balustrade again, and used his arm muscles to assist his vault over the balustrade. 

The roof came up, and he let himself roll into the shock.  When he rolled upright, Scott was already above him, black bag hanging from one hand.  Scott put down a hand, and hauled him to his feet. 

“What took you?”  Scott asked. 

“Couldn’t drag myself away,” Stonebridge said. 

That won him a huge grin. 

Faces were beginning to look over the top of a balustrade down at them, and voices were shouting over the music. 

“Offski!” he said to Scott, and darted for the edge of the roof.  A single jump down, and they were in the road, and running. 

 

* * *

 

Scott pulled the Landcruiser into the garage.  Michael popped his door open before the car had come to a stop.  The team emerged from the Crib to meet them. 

“Well?” Lady Macbeth asked. 

“We come bearing gifts,” Scott drawled as he strolled past her with the black plastic bags.  “I feel like Santa Claus.”

“Everything from Adonis’s place is in there,” Michael said, behind him. 

“And by everything, we mean _everything_ ,” Scott said.  He upended the black plastic bags onto the light tables, shaking the thin plastic to scare out all the flash drives and loops of cable. 

“We have to find _one_ application,” Julia Richmond said, her long-lashed eyes wide, “in _all this?_ ” 

There were discs, and boxes of discs, and folders of more discs.  There were flash drives, and portable hard-drives.  There were twists of cables, and shiny LED screens, and a clatter of hardware that Scott couldn’t even tell apart without picking them all up. 

“Plus this,” Michael added, lifting the laptop case. “This comes directly from Suvorin himself.”

“Well done,” Lady Macbeth said.  “Not as neat as it might have been, but mission accomplished.  And a very good use of good-cop-bad-cop.” 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “Mikey and me know each other so well, that kinda thing’s easy.”  He glanced at Michael.

Michael didn’t meet his eye. 

That hadn’t been good-cop-bad-cop.  That had been good-cop-berserk-maniac.  Michael hadn’t been pretending, and they both knew it.  He’d been on the verge of blowing Suvorin away.  If Scott had not been there, Suvorin would be dead; as dead as his two guards.  If Scott had not been there, Michael would have lost control, the way he had on that bus, the way he had on the train, the way he had when they’d lost Evans.

Zero had heard the conversation with Suvorin, but thank God their radios couldn’t pick up what wasn’t audible.  Scott had seen Michael’s saliva fly with the force of his shout; he’d seen how Michael’s face had gone purple with anger, his eyes dilated with bloodlust.  He wasn’t the only one who’d seen, either.  Suvorin had caved in, shocked by the animal in Michael’s eyes, frightened by the violent insanity glittering there. 

And it had come up _so fast_ ; instant apeshit.  “I’ll kill your wife,” Suvorin had threatened.  Real bad choice of words, pal. 

But this time he’d had Scott to hold him back.  He hadn’t lost control.  His intel-gathering usefulness was limited to ‘Hulk – smash!’ but at least he’d _listened._   Scott could handle him.  He would just have to make sure he stuck to Michael’s side like a tick until Bruce Banner could get his feet under him again. 

The rest of Section Twenty was still looking through the stuff piled on the two tables. 

“So the Nostromo programme is somewhere in this lot,” Sinclair said.   

“ _Somewhere_ ,” Michael agreed. 

“Triage,” Dalton decided.  “We’ll start by sorting out everything that doesn’t carry data first.”  She picked up a clock-radio and moved it to another table. 

“I’ll pick out all the cables,” Scott said.  He started picking up cables, and picking out bits and pieces from them.  There was a USB hub, with a handful of drives still plugged in. 

“This is going to take time,” Richmond complained.  “Going through all of this just to find one folder…”

Scott began unplugging the USB hub, and stopped, staring at one of them.  “Heh-heh,” he chuckled, delighted.  “What if I could magically put my hand on it for you, using my mad Delta Force skills?”

“I’ll believe _that_ when I see it,” Michael scoffed at him.

“Bet you a hundred bucks?” Scott teased. 

“Not a chance,” Richmond said.  “What have you got?”

Scott chuckled again, and held up a flash drive in his fingers.  He flicked it around in his thumb and index finger so they could all see.  The letters NOST had been inked onto the flat side in black felt-tip pen. 

“Ah-ha!” Richmond said. 

“For you, my Khaleesi,” Scott offered it to her.  She snatched it out of his hand and turned away to her station. 

“But not now,” Dalton declared.  “I commend you all on a very good distance run today.  Richmond, Baxter, you have first overnight watch.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Baxter answered. 

“Scott, Stonebridge, you’re together again tonight,” Dalton added, and then surveyed her team.  “Go.  Sleep.  We pick up the hunt in the morning.” 

“Copy that,” Michael sighed.

 

* * *

 

 CAPE TOWN.

## SUNDAY MORNING.

Stonebridge gave up on sleep early, knowing another hour of nightmares wouldn’t rest him any further.  He padded out so as not to wake Scott,  and set out for his morning run.

He did his warm-up in the front garden of the house, and then let himself out onto the road.  Then he plugged his earpiece in, and hammered the streets towards the Crib in a good long work-out.  The sun crept up over the mountains as he ran, lightening the grubby streets into a surprisingly dainty beauty.  At this hour on a Sunday morning he had the streets almost to himself, and only his music to accompany him. 

Tiredness coincided with his arrival at a high paint-tagged wall, lined with razor-wire.  He pulled his earbuds out, and went in through the gate.  He walked quickly around the building to the back entrance. The Crib’s perimeter warning would have detected his movement, and he waved as he went past the hidden video-camera.  His cellphone vibrated briefly in his pocket to show that he’d been recognised, and that all was well. 

He let himself in through the heavy steel security gate, and found himself facing Baxter, who was on his way out. 

“Morning,” he said.  

“Morning to you,” Baxter said.  “You’re in, I’m out.  Breakfast calls.”  They passed each other, and he walked deeper into the Crib, under the lattice of scaffolding that held up the cabling and the lights. 

Most of the Crib shut down overnight, but Richmond was already sitting at Primary One.  The only sign that she’d moved at all was her long black hair, loosely framing her face.  Otherwise, it was as if she hadn’t slept at all.

“Good morning,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. 

“Morning,” he said, and sat down in Scott’s favourite chair.  “You’re up early.” 

“I woke up at about four and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I started looking over the stuff from Adonis.”

“Shoulder hurting?”

“The stitches are pulling a bit.”  Her fingers went up to her shoulder, feeling carefully at the half-healed bullet-wound under the white sling.  “But at least I found something to make the time worthwhile.”

“Fill me in?” he asked.  Scott had left a packet of mint humbugs stuck under his monitor, and he helped himself to one. 

She shook her head.  “I’ll wait for the others.”  Her fingers went back to her shoulder.  “ _Why_ do I _keep_ getting shot in the shoulder?” she asked, irritated.

“Just bad luck?”

“Hmph.  Scott says they’re all aiming at my boobs,” she said, and then quirked one eyebrow at him.  “But that’s Scott.” 

Scott’s pet theory was that Richmond was more approachable when her hair was down.  The plait was a sign that she was in an aggressive mood, while the pony tail was a sign that she was busy.  But when her hair was loose over her shoulders it meant that she was feeling feminine, and possibly even friendly. 

Scott spent rather a lot of time obsessing about women, Stonebridge thought to himself.  He crunched up the humbug in his teeth. 

“While it’s just the two of us here, I wanted to ask you something,” he said.  “A personal question.”

“Hmm,” she said, narrowing the amazing eyelashes at him.  “Okay.  Shoot.”

“Did you and Scott really…” he swallowed the last of the mint.  “I suppose it’s none of my business.”  Actually it _was_ his business, but he didn’t want to say so. 

“Did we have a fling?”  She sat back in her chair. 

“Ah … yes.”

She frowned, so that he was reminded sharply that she punched a lot harder than she looked.  “Did Scott kiss and tell?” she asked. 

“No!  Someone else did.  Not…” he raised a hand to forestall any protests,  “ _not_ that I’m judging you.”  He had no right to judge anyone at all for fraternising with a colleague, particularly when neither Scott nor Richmond was married.    

“It’s none of your business.” 

“I know.” 

“But then again, it’s nothing to be ashamed of either. He’s not in my chain of command.”  She raised her eyes to him and flicked back her hair.  “Yes.  Just after I broke up with David.  We went away for the weekend.  It was fun, and I’m glad we did it.” 

“Oh.” 

“It was a rebound fling – but on the other hand it was the very best kind of rebound fling.  Do you know what I mean?” 

“Well… I’ve never had a rebound fling.” 

“Lucky you.  David was …” she drew in a deep breath.  “There are some men who say they like an independent woman, but then they lose no time in demolishing your independence one block at a time.  You know?  By the time I got rid of David, he’d managed to knock down rather a lot of blocks.”

“Shit.”  He remembered David, but he hadn’t got much more than the general impression that he was rather possessive.  As a rather possessive man himself, Stonebridge hadn’t thought anything of it.  Kerry had liked possessiveness, but not all women did. 

“I ran off with Scott, just to spite him.  And I’m glad I did.  Banging Scott for a weekend did me more good than a month of eating chocolate in front of the TV or a year of therapy.”

“Scott the Freudian?”  he asked.  “Calling Doctor Scott?”

She wagged her finger at him.   “Do you know why Scott has such luck with women?”

“I’ve wondered.”

“It’s because he has the gift of making a woman feel like she’s badass, like you’re fucking cool, just the way you are.”   She unfolded both arms to sketch her level of fucking-coolness in the air, and then winced as her shoulder reminded her that she’d recently been shot. 

“Is that Scott’s trick?”  Stonebridge asked, amused. 

“Sometimes, a lady doesn’t _need_ a relationship to have a good time.  Sometimes, a lady just needs to be reminded that she _doesn’t_ need a relationship.  _Particularly_ not a relationship with a douche. I don't need a douche, I am a bad-ass.”  Her eyes were fierce.  “And then when David came running back, crawling and nagging and trying to guilt me into taking some more of his nonsense, I told him to take a hike.”

“Of course.” 

“And there you go.  That was my fling with Scott.  The most therapeutic bonk I’ve ever had.  He’s not boyfriend material, but I can recommend him as a great shag.”

“I’ll… er…  bear that in mind,” he said. 

An alarm chimed. 

Richmond leaned back to the screen to check the video camera.  Stonebridge saw a foreshortened Dalton and Sinclair pass under the video, with Scott trailing after them.  Richmond tapped her keyboard to send Dalton’s cellphone a missed-call through the Crib’s telecom system. 

“Good morning, boys and girls, are we ready for Lesson Two?” Dalton asked, sweeping in, and then answered herself.  “Good.”

Stonebridge and Richmond got to their feet, acknowledging the arrival of their officers.  Stonebridge nodded to Scott, but didn’t yield Scott’s favourite chair.  He sat down in it again.  Scott propped his rump against the edge of the table, and took a drink out of a Styrofoam cup.  Where had Scott managed to acquire a cup of proper coffee, in this area, and at this hour? 

“Ma’am,” Richmond said.  “I’ve started looking at our loot, and I’ve already found something.”

“Already?” Sinclair asked.  “Very good.”

“I started early,” Richmond said.  She turned to Primary One and began flicking through her files.  “First of all.  The laptop from Suvorin.  I made a clone of the hard drive, and had a look.  But no dice.”

“No dice?”

“As it happens, this is the one laptop that had every reason to be there.  Income statements, credit card records, purchase orders, bar inventories…”

“Maybe the club owner’s laptop?” Sinclair said. 

“The clincher was _this_ ,” Richmond said.  She opened the My Videos folder.  A page of small thumbnails of .avi files scrolled up the screen – rank after rank after rank of them.  “Rather a large collection of man-on-man porn.”

“ _Definitely_ the club owner’s laptop,” Sinclair corrected himself. 

“But it’s not entirely a negative result,” Richmond said, before anyone could say that she was reporting that she had nothing to report.  “Liam found a connection between Ava Knox and Manhattans.  She owns a share in the place.”

“Ava Knox owns the place that employs the man who killed Adonis?” Dalton said. 

“Killed?”

“Denzil Adonis passed away on the operating table, yesterday afternoon.”

“Fuck,” Scott said.  “I liked him.”

“Ava Knox points him out to us, and on the very same day someone goes to kill him?” Dalton said.  She paced away, and then swivelled and paced back.  “I like this not.”

“Conrad Knox knows we’re digging after him, and he’s covering his tracks,” Sinclair pointed out.

“Or,” Dalton said, “Ava herself is helping him, and used us as a cover to get to him.  We’ve only her word that she doesn’t agree  with his scheme.”

“She seemed sincere to me,” Stonebridge disagreed.

“She would,” Dalton said.  “She’s a fanatic too, in her own way.”

“She’s also given us a lead to tracing Knox’s missiles.”

“Missiles that would have declared themselves in the course of time anyway,” Dalton countered.  “No, we’ll take every word from our Miss Knox as fruit of a possibly poisoned tree.  She gets no intel from us, no updates, is that clear?”   

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Moving on,” Richmond said.  “I looked at Adonis’s file, going through the specs of the missile and the parameters of the software, and I was able to put a few details together.  We’re looking for a missile weighing four-point-three tons, seven-and-a-half metres long, with a range of over five hundred kilometres using a single stage solid fuel rocket.”

There was a brief silence.  “Four-point-three tons?” Scott repeated.  

“That’s bigger than we expected,” Sinclair said.

“Bigger than Knox could expect to build in his backyard,” Richmond agreed.  “A missile that big can’t just be made out of a hobby rocket kit.  So I started looking at military missiles that match those specs, and I came up with this.”

A photograph appeared on the main screen.  It showed a grey-green missile pointing at the sky from the back of a truck.  The truck was parked on an incongruously pretty green lawn. 

“This,” Richmond said, “is the USSR’s OTR-23 Oka, NATO codename ‘Spider.’  Mobile launch platform, and a range of five hundred kilometres, give or take some Cold War exaggerations.  Capable of carrying conventional or nuclear warheads.”

“I remember this one,” Sinclair said.  “The Spider was decommissioned under Gorbachev, under some or other treaty.”

“In 1987,” Richmond agreed. 

“One of my first missions was tracking down a few of them that got to the Balkans,” Sinclair said.  “All sorts of military hardware went missing from Soviet arsenals when the USSR’s economy collapsed.  Knox could have put his hands on a few of those.”

“He has,” Richmond agreed.  “I came across a news article from three months ago.”  She flicked another window open. 

The headline read MISSILES INTERCEPTED IN HARBOUR.

“A combined South African, South Korean operation found four Spider missiles hidden in shipping containers on board a ship, the _Alexa Maersk,_ in Cape Town harbour,” Richmond paraphrased the article for them.  “The missiles were travelling from Libya to North Korea, disguised as mining equipment.  They were handed over to Knox’s Weapons Decommissioning Program for destruction, and everyone involved is in jail in Seoul.”

Stonebridge felt cold.  Conrad Knox had not only nuclear weapons, but guided missiles to carry them.  He could strike at any city in South Africa.  If he put his missiles onto mobile platforms, he could strike at any city in the whole of Africa… He pictured teeming Lagos, or romantic Casablanca, or ancient Cairo, going up in a mushroom cloud. 

Dalton walked around the table to stare at the scanned page with an intense expression.  “How the hell did we miss this?” she demanded.

“Because,” Richmond said, “this one went down in the record books as a win for the _good_ guys.” 

“Nobody has had reason to look closely at Conrad Knox before us,” Sinclair said. 

“Where did those missiles go to?” Dalton asked.

“The containers were definitely taken out of _Alexa Maersk_ here in Cape Town,” Richmond said.  “But they’re not recorded in the Weapons Decommissioning Site’s entry register.  Somewhere between the harbour and the site, they were diverted.”

“At some point,” Sinclair said, rubbing his beard and staring off into a corner of the ceiling, “Someone is going to have to go to that site, and physically open every single box to see what’s actually in them…” He let the words tail off.  

“The rest of Knox’s toys are not our priority,” Dalton snapped. 

“It could be he’s building himself a chemical arsenal as well,” Scott said.  “More of ATAT’s Cold War relics.”

“No…” Dalton said, “I don’t think so.  He’s not going to waste his time on a terror weapon if he has genuine Armageddon in his hands.” 

“Four warheads; four missiles,” Richmond said.

“Besides, even if he does have the missiles for Plan B,” Dalton said.  “Even if he wants to let loose a gas attack on, say, Cairo… Which is the greater threat to life – nuclear or chemical weapons?”

“The nukes.”  Sinclair spoke for all of them. 

“Therefore our priority remains stopping him from using those nukes.”

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “And at least our needle in the haystack just got bigger.  From 450 kilos to four-and-a-half tons, times four.”

“Scott, Stonebridge, you’re up.  Port of Cape Town,” Dalton said.  “Richmond, when Baxter gets back, I want both of you looking at that Korean operation. I want everything on those four Oka’s – _everything_.”

 

* * *

 

The port of Cape Town was a whole other genus of harbour compared with tiny Kalk Bay.  Cape Town might once have been no more than a rambunctious layover for sailors on their way to the Spice Islands, but it had left its exotic past far behind.  Today it was a business, a corporate giant holding its own in the global economy.  The harbour had huge commercial basins, with berths for container ships, break-bulk cargo carriers, tankers, and cruise liners.  There were fishing boats here too, certainly, but these were large Asian deep-sea trawlers.  There was even an oil rig, standing looking down on them like a giant modern-day Trojan Horse as they drove past. 

Scott turned the Landcruiser down the dockyard’s South Arm, and drove between ranks of warehouses to the far end.  Stonebridge sat in the passenger’s seat, and kept his thoughts to himself. 

In the shadow of the Port Control tower Scott steered through a gate in a steel picket fence.  The gate was open, which was a rarity in this crime-obsessed city.  They drove around the base of the tower to a small car park, almost on the water’s edge.  Scott parked in a space that looked down a strip of lawn, to where the sea lapped at the concrete base of the South Arm. 

It was surprisingly quiet here, with the bulk of the tower sheltering them from the city and the tourist-trap hubbub of the V&A Waterfront out of sight to their left.

“This is nice,” Stonebridge said, and then he stopped, surprised at himself. 

He was still capable of recognising his surroundings as ‘nice.’  He’d thought he would never see ‘nice’ ever again.  But the sky was blue, and the sea was glossy as resin.  The long swells pushed their way along the sea without breaking the oily surface, and the buoy just a few metres offshore said _bong_ with placid purpose.  It _was_ nice, and he was surprised to find it so.

“Yeah,” Scott said.  He felt for his radio.  “Zero,” Scott said, speaking to his radio.  “Bravo One.  We are outside Papa Charlie.”  

“ _Roger that, Bravo One_ ,” Richmond’s voice said in Stonebridge’s ear.  “ _Bravo Two, comm check._ ”

Stonebridge felt for his radio, and pressed the button.  “Zero, Bravo Two.  Reading you loud and clear.”

“ _Roger, out_.”

Scott wound down his window, and lit up a cigarette; playing his game of not-quite smoking in Sinclair's car again.   

Stonebridge checked his watch.  It wasn’t yet 10am, but it was already hot.  They had a few minutes to spare, before the appointment between the deputy manager of the Container Depot and an agent from ‘Interpol.’  

“There was a message from Ava Knox in my inbox, earlier,” Stonebridge said to the buoy on the water.

“Yeah?”

“Your mate Curtis is on his way home.”  He glanced at Scott, to judge his reaction. 

Scott’s mouth was astonished, under the mirrors of his glasses.  “That was quick!”

“Money talks.”

“So it does.”  

Scott smoked his cigarette, peacefully.  His eyes were invisible behind his shades. 

Stonebridge chose his words carefully.  “Last night,” he said.  “In Manhattans.”

“Yeah.”

“You and Pete.”

“He was hitting on me before you walked in.”  He blew out a long streamer of smoke.  “I wonder what happened to him after we split last night,” he said thoughtfully. 

Stonebridge gave him a glance behind the privacy of his sunglasses, trying not to make his stare visible.  “Would you have, um, taken him up on his offer?” 

“Not my type.”

“You have a _type?_ ”  Relief made him speak quickly and brusquely. 

“Jealousy makes you nasty,” Scott said, blithely.  “I have standards.”

“Standards?  I thought you just jumped on anything that sat still long enough.  Colleagues, contacts, hostages, stray Mossad agents?”

“That’s women.  I’m looking for something else with guys.”

“I don’t get it,” Stonebridge complained.  “What can a guy offer you that a girl can’t?”

“Do you really want to know?” Scott asked.  He grinned wickedly, his eyebrows flicking up over the top of his sunglasses, daring him. 

Scott would tell him, if he asked.  And he realized he didn’t want to know, in case what he said wasn’t what he wanted to hear.  “Not touching that with a barge-pole, Scott,” he said, quickly.  “Too much information.”

Scott grinned, and wriggled with delight at his own sense of humour.  “Suit yourself, Stonewall.”   

They watched a harbour tug chortle past around the end of the arm on a frothy wake, crossing from one basin to another. 

Scott tipped his head, quizzically, his cigarette stopped in mid-lift.  “Is it just me, buddy, or is that boat…?”

“It’s going backwards, yeah,” Stonebridge confirmed.  “They can go forwards, backwards, sideways...  The whole prop gear turns three-sixty degrees in the water.”

“Huh,” Scott said.  “Go figure.”  He took a deep drag. 

“They can dance a tugboat quadrille, if they want to.  They’re that agile.”

“I forgot, you grew up as a Navy brat,” Scott said.  “All right, Hornblower.  Why is that one going backward?”

“ _I_ don’t know!” Stonebridge protested.  “I joined the Marines, remember?”

Scott shook his head, and chuckled.  “Whoo-ee!  Your old man must have been _pissed_.”

“He wasn’t terribly understanding about it at first, I’ll give you that,” Stonebridge said.  “But he came around to the idea of a Bootneck in the family eventually.” 

Scott finished his cigarette. 

“Do you really want to know?”  he asked, casually, stubbing out his butt in the car’s ashtray with two fingers. 

“Do I really want to know what?  Eloquence, Scott.  It’s something you Yanks need to learn.  It makes communication _so_ much easier.” 

“Asshole.  Do you really want to know what I find attractive in a guy?” 

“Shit.” 

“Okey-dokey.”

“No, wait,” Stonebridge held up a hand, forestalling him.  “I’m tough.  Hit me.” 

“Okay.”

“Well?”

Scott pursed his lips, and then pulled them sideways in a pout – McKayla Maroney was not impressed.  He thought over the idea. 

“Good lines,” he said, eventually.  “Nothing like a body that fills out its own lines neatly.” 

“Lines?” Stonebridge said, doubtfully.  That wasn’t what he’d ever found attractive in a man… not that _he_ ever found men attractive, of course. 

“Not just muscles.  Muscles and balance and _good lines_.  See, the difference between a guy and a girl is like the difference between a racehorse and a seal.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.  Think about it.  Both real nice to look at, yeah?  But one is all smooth curves and wavy lines, and the other is all twitchy muscles and angles and bone.”  Scott held up his hands, and sketched his meaning in the air.  “Both attractive, but in different ways.  Curves versus bone.” 

“Bone isn’t attractive.” 

“ _Hell,_ yeah, bone is attractive.  Not just bone, but bone just at the right points.  Like here.” 

Stonebridge felt something touch his elbow, just below the joint, and jumped at the sudden shock of it.  Scott’s fingertips, feather light, stroking around the circumference of his forearm. 

“Muscles.  Like wires,” Scott said.  His touch was warm.

“You’re touching my arm.” 

“Yeah, but you’ve got such _nice_ arms.  And the spray-on T-shirts don’t hurt either, lemme tell you.”

His mouth had gone dry. All the hairs on his arms had lifted at that touch.  God, his arm had never felt so sensitive in his life. 

“And over here,” he felt Scott’s fingers trace around to the back of his elbow, a light but impossibly electrical touch,  “it all comes together in just this one narrow little point, all balanced on this little bone right here.  And that’s sexy.”  Scott’s index finger came to rest on the point of his elbow, and he resisted the urge to press his arm down to ask for that stroking touch again. 

“You’re touching my arm.”  He was aware suddenly of the plaintive note in his voice, and the fact that he hadn’t pulled his arm away. 

“And your hips.  Yeah, let’s not forget about the hips, Sergeant Stonebridge.  They push out under your skin just right.  Ribs, flanks, hips - _real_ nice.” 

Flanks?  Scott was looking at his _flanks?_   “All right, that’s enough!”  He yanked his arm away. 

“Heh-heh-heh!”  Scott laughed.  That annoying pleased-little-boy croon.  He uncurled his back, stretching both hands over his head.  “Oh, you are so easy, Mikey!” 

It had all been a prank! And he'd let it happen!  

“Jesus, you are _such_ an arsehole.”

“I had you, buddy, I had you.”

He clenched his teeth and pointed his finger at Scott.  “ _You_ are not getting me to react _ever_ again, Scott!  I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”

“Hee hee hee.”

“It’s ten o’clock.  I’m going to go do my job, and you’re going to sit here and think about how inappropriate it is to grope your colleagues.”

“Go get ‘em, Stonewall!  Heh-heh- _heeee._ ” Scott jiggled in his seat with wicked glee, laughing at him with his whole body. 

“Don’t call me that.” 

He got out of the car, slamming the door behind him.  He stalked around to the main entrance of the tower, and thumbed his radio to Transmit. 

The air conditioning met him as soon as he went in through the glass doors.  Then he went in through a second set of glass doors, and then to a reception desk where he had to show ID to prove that he really was John Gilbert Renfield, Interpol, and sign an entry log.  Then the guard at the reception desk pulled out a receipt, and Stonebridge walked the huge distance of three metres to a second guard who collected the receipt and opened the turnstile to let him into the lift lobby. 

He supposed it made sense to Portnet.  As a filter for keeping out idle passers-by, it might have been effective; but as a means of keeping out MI20…?  He wondered if he’d have got away with signing himself Mickey Mouse.  He went up to the third floor, where he introduced himself to a receptionist. 

“My name’s Renfield, Interpol.  My field office phoned ahead?” His field office had actually been Major Sinclair, applying a thick layer of soft-soap with his usual urbane skill. 

A minute later he was met by an African woman.  She had plummy cheekbones, and a high forehead topped one of the most impressive African hairstyles he’d ever seen: a sort of mohawk, created from a roll of glossy braids, intricately woven in, out and around each other.

“Mr Renfield?”  She had perfect dimples. 

“Yes,” he said, immediately attracted to her in spite of himself. 

“My name is Tamara Modise.  I’m the deputy manager of the Container Depot.  If you’d like to come this way?”  Her accent was barely noticeable, merely a slight flatness in her vowels – ‘nehm’ rather than ‘name.’ 

“It’s good of you to see me at such short notice on a Sunday morning,” he said, following her deeper into the office. 

“No, no, it’s no trouble.  We’re the second largest container port in the country; we run 24/7.” 

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” 

“In here.” 

She ushered him into a conference room – all polished chrome, ebony and black leather.  On the wall at the head of the table was a large painting of a freighter thrashing her way through a lumpy putty-coloured sea. 

Modise sat down at a laptop that was already waiting, and Stonebridge sat down next to her. 

“Now,” she said, “We can look at all the containers coming in and out of the terminal, which ships they’re from, who owns them, where they’re going, et cetera.”  She logged into a corporate interface. 

“I’m looking for four containers that were taken off _Alexa Maersk,_ three months ago.”

“Which four?” 

“That’s where things get interesting.”  He explained quickly about the South Korean operation.

She nodded.  “I remember that.”

“Do you remember what happened to those four containers?”

The delightful dimples flickered.  “I’m good, Mr Renfield, but I’m not that good.  I’ll have to look it up.  Let’s see,” she said.  She began patting at the laptop’s keys. 

He watched her.  Her arm lay close to his on the table, and he could smell a trace of slight perfume.  Her skin looked as smooth as chocolate, and he realized with a sudden start that he was attracted to this woman. 

He’d thought he would never be attracted to any woman ever again.  He’d written off his own sex life without thinking, imagining that grief would put a wall between himself and any hint of sexuality.  Certainly, he couldn’t see himself with a blonde, ever again.  Every blonde woman who passed by made his heart droop a little with loss. 

Then again, plump Africans with chocolate skin and elaborate braids were about as far from slim blonde Englishwomen as one could get.  Perhaps that would be his future, he thought.  Perhaps his internal compass would settle in a whole new direction, as far as Kerry as he could find. 

She sat back in her chair.  “ _Alexa Maersk_ docked on the twenty-first.  These four containers – they weren’t due to come off here, so we won’t find them with the others.  Hmm…” 

“They were going from Libya to North Korea.” 

“Yes, I know.  See, the way loading works is that we calculate where to put them, based on weight and where they’ll be offloaded.  Going all that way, they’ll have been on a lower tier.”

Pat-pat-pat on the laptop.  “Here they are.  Four forty-foot High-Cube containers, confiscated on the twenty-second by SA customs.”

“Our four?”

She frowned at the laptop.  “There’s no field in the database for ‘this was in the Cape Times’, but …”

“What happened to them?”

“The containers were stored in the confiscations section at Paarden Eiland under guard until the eight of the next month.  And then they were released to the SA Weapons Decommissioning Programme.”

“So the missiles went to Conrad Knox.”

“Conrad Knox knows what to do with them.  They’re probably tin cans and brake pads by now,” she reassured him.  “Why does Interpol want to know, anyway?”

He had a cover-story ready.  “It’s classified.  But suffice to say, there are many reasons why someone would want to get their hands on twelve tons of rocket fuel.”

To his surprise, she smiled, flashing her dimples.  “ _Ehhh!_ ” she said, with satisfaction.  “They won’t have much happiness with these!”

“How so?”

“I was there.  They’re empty.  There was no fuel in any of them.” 

No fuel?  That was interesting.  He remembered Sinclair saying that these were decommissioned missiles.  No-one had expected these missiles to take flight, after 1987.  But did Knox know that, before he stole them?  

“Can you tell me exactly where these containers went?”  he asked.  “Who took them, when, who signed for them?”

“I can do better than that for you.”  Modise patted away at her keys, and pulled up a pdf document.  “Penzatrek Cargo Hauling signed for them on the ninth at ten-thirty.  Here’s the asset movement form from Customs, and the truck’s manifests.  I can Bluetooth them to you, if you like.”

 

* * *

  

Scott turned his head to look in his rear-view mirror.  Michael Stonebridge was coming up behind the car, crossing the parking lot towards him with his usual wide-legged trudge.  Scott sat up in his seat, and flicked off the car’s radio.  Michael came up to the driver’s side , and opened Scott’s door. 

“I’m driving,” Michael said.  “Out.” 

“My car.” 

“My intel, my rules.  Out.”

Scott sighed, and got out.  Michael got in, and Scott walked around the car to the passenger’s side door.  He got in and buckled up as Stonebridge started the car.  There was no need to discuss Michael’s little chat upstairs – he’d heard it all, and so had Zero.

“ _Bravo Two, be advised, your intel has been received.  Take the N1 exit from the city and await instructions en route_.” 

“Wilco,” Michael said.  He steered the car out of the parking lot and they gathered speed. 

“Pretty, was she?”  Scott asked.  “I can tell from your voice.”

Stonehenge didn’t answer.  Michael Learns to Keep His Mouth Shut.

“I’ll take that as a yes.  Whoo- _hoo._   I should have gone up there instead.  C-cup?  C-cup is just right.  She sounded like a C-cup.”

“She was a professional working woman,” Michael said, crisply.  “And unlike _you_ , not every day of my life is spent on pussy-patrol, thank you very much.” 

“Thank you _very_ much,” Scott repeated, ironically mimicking his accent.  “While you were chatting up the lady, Michael Buble, I was listening to the radio.”

Michael’s eyebrows went up.  “And?” he prompted.    

“England lost a wicket.”  Scott grinned.  “Bell got run out.” 

Mikey didn’t answer.  He just narrowed his eyes, and made a hissing noise like a pissed-off parrot. 

Scott crooned with delight.  

“You’re such an arsehole,”  Michael said. 

“It’s your fault.”

“ _My_ fault?  How is it _my_ fault?”

“You started it.  You got me into the dumb game in the first place.”

Scott had seen the game played in India, in Pakistan, in Sri Lanka, all over Anglophone Africa, and now he was infected with it himself. He had gone to the Stonebridges’ house to watch a test match, and it had been a huge mistake.  He’d gone with every intention of mocking the silly Englishmen in their silly white suits, but somehow, in the course of trying to achieve pin-point accurate mockery, he’d become infected.  Englishmen were bastards.  Rugby might be a good game for bashing each other’s teeth in.  But cricket was an even better game for wasting five whole days in front of the telly with a six-packs of beer. 

Englishmen: bastards.

“So this is vengeance, is it?” 

“Hell, yeah.”  Scott slapped the dash with his palm for emphasis.  “From now on, I’m going to back _every_ team that England plays _against_ , _ever_.” 

“Just you wait, Scott,” Michael threatened.  “Just you wait for the Superbowl, and see me gloat when Michigan loses.”

He was being threatened with Stonerevenge.  “You’re out of luck, buddy.  I don’t follow it any more.”

“Oh, tosh,” Michael scoffed.  “I’ve never met an American expat who doesn’t follow the Superbowl.”

Scott’s good humour faded, quite suddenly. 

“I used to watch it.”  He settled his elbow on the window sill.  “But I won’t watch it again until I go back home.” 

“Tosh.”  Michael went silent.  He drove without a word for a few minutes, and then took the opportunity of a red traffic light to give Scott a piercing stare.  “Really?” he asked, in a new tone of voice. 

 “It ain’t the same, buddy, and that’s a fact.”

“It’s the same game, Scott.”

“No, it is not, Mikey, and I’ll tell you why.  Nobody watches the Superbowl for the _Superbowl’s_ sake.  You watch it to hang out with your buddies, and drink beer, and shout at the TV, and argue about the coaches, and talk about it on the shooting range next morning.  Tell me you don’t.”  

“Yes?” Michael conceded the point.

“It just isn’t the same if you’re watching it in a cheap-ass hotel-room on a laptop, and the only beer you can get is a Tiger – and believe me the only time it’s _not_ time for a Tiger is the Superbowl – and there’s no one else in the whole fucking city who gives a fuck about it.  It’s there, Stateside, but there’s no-one around _me_ to share it with, and that sucks.  Sucks too much.” He stopped, aware that he was sinking into a morose lecture.  "I"ll do cricket instead so I have people to share it with.  Doing the Superbowl alone just sucks too much."  

Michael was frowning at the road, his eyes hooded and his lips thin, as if struck by a sudden thought that didn’t please him very much.

“Are you home-sick?” he asked, suddenly. 

“Sometimes.” 

“Do you want to go home?”

“ _Course_ I want to go home, asshole!  What do you take me for, the Flying Dutchman?”  He didn’t want to elaborate, and he covered it with sarcasm.  He was a convicted felon who had skipped out on his parole.  He was a suspect in half-a-dozen murder investigations all over Central America.  He could never go home.  He had made his bed, and he would lie in it. 

At least his little apartment in Hereford was better than the back room of a brothel in Kuala Lumpur.  And it was a million times better than a jail cell in Ecuador. 

Why had no-one told the Flying Dutchman that he could just give up on weathering the Cape, and _sail someplace else?_

“If someone gave you the opportunity to go home… right now… would you take it?” Michael asked.

“You mean Christy Bryant?” Scott said. 

Michael turned his head and looked at him, with a sharpness that said that Scott had put his finger on the question under the question.  “Well?” Stonebridge asked. 

“I don’t trust her,” he said.  He had good reason not to trust her.  She came with the proviso, unstated, that he’d pick up his old job where he left off. 

“Dalton thinks she wants you back,” Michael said. 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “I _know_ she wants me back.”  Her email, sent to his username on the Silk Road website, made that clear.  Langley must have been pissed that he’d walked out.  He’d been good at what he’d done.   Randy Andy had taught him well. 

And now, here they were again.  Him, and Randy Andy Correia, and Christy, all in Cape Town at the same time.  It was weird, as if all three of them were coming together again for some important turning point in their three lives.  His Mom believed in the tide in people’s lives, the ebb and flow of karma and destiny, and maybe this was one of those moments. 

He just hoped he wasn’t looking at a reprise of the shit that had gone down in Quito.  He never should have called her in Mog.  He sure as shit shouldn’t have fucked her in Niger.  He had been an idiot to draw her attention to him at all.  He should have just left her in his past, with Quito and Daniel and all the rest of his fucked-up past.  Stupid, stupid, stupid…

He’d been given a second chance, he’d been blessed with a blank slate, and he was going to embrace the future.  A future that did not include the CIA in any way.  He’d made his bed, and he would lie in it, and for now that bed was in a one-room apartment on an army base in Hereford.

Fortunately, Michael had also disappeared deep into brooding silence.  He frowned at the road, as if the car ahead had presented him with an ultimatum.  Scott was glad for the silence, for once. 

Finally he sighed, as if he was coming to terms with the ultimatum, and gave Scott a sideways glance.  “So the missiles are empty,” he said.  His voice announced that he’d changed the subject and hoped Scott would too.  “She was certain of it.”

“Yeah, if Knox wants to use them, he’s going to have to find rocket fuel too.”

“That gives us another angle to play,” Michael said. 

“Another needle to look for.  At some point he’s going to have to put all his needles together at the same time and the same place."

“Find any one needle, and we can follow it to find the nukes.”

“Does explain why he hired Adonis and his buddy,” Scott said.  “They’re 25 years old, and they’ve gone from Russia to Libya to Cape Town.  Wanna bet their interfaces have been put through Google Translate?”

Michael humphed at the idea. 

Scott’s earpiece crackled.  “ _Bravo Team.  New target.  Sending you location information as we speak_.”

 

* * *

 

 Penzer Truck Repair wasn’t a big company, but it operated out of big premises to accommodate its outsized customers.  Stonewall parked the Landcruiser on the other side of the yard, in the shade of a battered sports-fishing boat up on chocks.  They got out. Scott put on his sunglasses and looked around him at the yard.  In the side of the big corrugated building, a wide hangar-like door was open to the sunshine.  The front end of a shiny Mercedes Benz truck stuck out of the doorway like a half-hatched chick. 

“You want to take point, Mr Renfield?” he offered. 

“Be my guest, Mr Shaw.” 

Michael fell into step next to him as they walked across the yard.  The air was filled with the rumbling of the Merc’s engine, which grew as they walked across the tar.  The mechanics working on it ignored them as they walked inside and out of the sunshine.  The space around them was dark but spacious. 

Inside, a sign with the word ONTVANGS and a symbol of a pointing hand directed them through a door to their left. 

“Guess that’s Reception,” Stonebridge murmured in an undertone. 

Reception had a long black melamine counter, some old armchairs and a coffee table with a stack of motoring magazines.  Scott reached over and dinged on the bell with the palm of his hand.  A voice called back something in Afrikaans to him.  Scott turned away from the counter, to examine the room, aware that Stonebridge was doing the same.  He propped his back against the counter, and stared out of the window.   

Table Mountain was a distant grey zigzag on the horizon.  They were well beyond what in Cape Town was irreverently nick-named the Boerewors Curtain – that invisible line across the city at which the street signs and business names suddenly changed from predominantly English to predominantly Afrikaans. 

Scott heard movement behind him, and turned around.  He found himself facing a thickset white man.  He had ginger stubble on his head and his cheeks, and sunburn warred with the freckles on his forehead.  The man spoke to him in Afrikaans. 

“Yeah, good morning,” he said, in English.  “We’d like to speak to the manager, please?”

“I’m the manager,” the man said, shifting languages without any fumbling for words.  His English was faultless.  “Mark Penzer.”  He frowned, not liking the businesslike tone in Scott’s voice. 

Scott drew out his wallet, and opened it to show his Interpol ID.  “My name’s Shaw, I work with Interpol in the African Contraband and Controlled Substances Division.  I want to talk to you about four trucks of yours.”

Penzer leaned on his counter.  “Jeeze,” he said.  “Will there never be an end to this?  I already told the insurers…”

“We’re not here from the insurers,” Scott said.  “All we want is a bit of information, then we’ll be on our way.”

“Just following up,” Michael said, and smiled; all blue eyes and golden innocence.  Magic Mike.  “Crossing the T’s, dotting the I’s, you know how it is.”

“We’ve no interest at all in your trucks,” Scott said. 

“We’re only interested in the four shipping containers that just happened to be on them when they disappeared,” Michael said, falling into the role of good-cop as if they’d rehearsed.  “They were stolen from a Maersk ship.”

“Maersk?” Penzer frowned under his sunburn.  “I thought they belonged to Conrad Knox.  His firm chartered my four trucks.”

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “That’s the T Interpol wants us to cross.”

“Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” Michael asked, turning on the smile again. 

Penzer’s office was poky and smelled heavily of stale coffee-grounds and damp paper.  Penzer went behind his desk.  Scott took one chair while Magic Mike took the other. 

“Those trucks have caused me so much trouble these past few months,” Penzer complained, sitting down.  “I’ve had the cops in here, I’ve had the insurers at my throat, I had to wrap up Penzatrek ‘cos you can’t run a trucking company with only one truck, I had to pay back all my other customers, I nearly went bankrupt…”

“Well, we should be the last people who'll mention it,” Michael said, still playing Mr Nice Guy.  

“I hope so,” Penzer said.  “It’s been a nightmare.  The police were on the verge of accusing me of murdering my own drivers!” 

“They all disappeared at the same time?” Michael said. 

“Ja.”

“We’ve got the manifests here,” Michael said.  He took out his tablet, and opened the .pdf of the document. 

Penzer took it from his hand, and had a look.  “Ja, that’s Dan Boliko’s signature.  _Jeez-_ iss.  And I never saw any of them again.”  He gave the tablet back, shaking his head.

“Didn’t you have satellite trackers in them?” Scott asked. 

“I did!  And they got as far as Stellenbosch, and then _blerrie_ disappeared.  They must have been taken out.  Which means my guys must have been taken out first, if you know what I mean, because they wouldn’t have just stood by and let it happen.  They had jobs, families, and lives to come back to.  My guys weren’t just random _truck_ -drivers, these were _my guys_.”  Penzer looked fierce.

“What do you know about what was in those containers?” Michael asked. 

“Old rockets,” Penzer said.  “Going to the Weapons Decommissioning Project.” 

“Why did Knox hire you to carry them?” Michael asked. 

Scott held his silence.  The man was cooperating with Mr Nice Guy.  Mr Nasty would take cards in the game if he had to, but he’d stay quiet until then and leave the business to Michael. 

“Doing his bit for the small business-man, he said,” Penzer explained.  “He came to my rescue, afterwards.  I went to him when the cops started getting on my case.  I said, listen, I don’t know what happened to your containers, but I didn’t steal them, and now I’m deep in the dwang.  My name is going to be all over the newspapers saying that I murdered my own drivers.”

Knox must have been _delighted_ to hear that, Scott thought to himself.  Knox had his own reasons for not wanting the story of the missing missiles all over the newspapers. 

“And what did he say?” Michael said.

“He was a star!  He said, don’t worry, just leave it to me.  I’ll deal with the cops, and the insurance.”

“And they paid out?”

“No, _he_ did.”  Penzer sat back in his chair, satisfied.  “That Mr Knox is a real class act, you know?  They were carrying his cargo, he said, it’s his problem.  The Weapons Decommissioning Project has a responsibility to do right by its associates, he said.”

Knox hadn’t done right by Denzil Adonis, Scott thought, irritably.  He’d liked Adonis. 

“Knox even made sure the cops took it seriously.  There’s a guy named Joseph Dreyer.  He’s keeping an eye on the case, and if there’re any leads…”

“Yes, we’ve already met Mr Dreyer,” Michael said, with a tone of quiet threat that Scott was sure Penzer wouldn’t recognise.  “He’s all over the case, as you say.”

“Can we get the drivers’ details, and the trucks’ descriptions?” Scott asked.  “Everything you know about ‘em: friends, families, associates, shoe-sizes…” 

“Ja, sure, sure.”  Penzer turned around to his filing cabinet, opened a drawer and started riffling through hanging folders.  “I keep it all in one place; I got so tired of having to drag it all out for the police and the insurers and every other Tom, Dick and Harry.”  Penzer held up a folder.  “Here.  Let me run these through the printer and make copies for you, ‘kay?”

* * *

 

 “So Penzer is a dead-end?”  Dalton asked. 

“He knows _nada,_ ” Scott said. 

“Knox paid him to keep his mouth shut, although he doesn’t know it,” Stonebridge added.    

“Another person who believes Knox is an all-around good guy,” Sinclair said.  “It’s going to be a tough sell, convincing anyone this fellow is a serious threat.”

“We don’t _have_ to convince shit!” Scott protested.  “Find him, kill him, get the nukes back. Job done.”

“As always, Scott,” Sinclair said, “your grasp of the complexities of international diplomacy borders on the paralytic.” 

Stonebridge wasn’t sure why that pleased Scott, but Scott grinned as if he’d been complimented.

“Baxter,” Dalton said, “Have you turned up anything on Toufeeq yet?” 

“No, ma’am,” Baxter said.  “I’m running the name through Knox’s known contacts and employees, but nothing’s jumping out. 

Stonebridge was standing behind Scott.  As if he was just occupying his hands with make-work, he opened the Manhattans’ laptop as they were talking.  He had his flash-drive in his pocket, and he put it into the USB port.  A moment to open the file directory, and another moment to drag-and-drop a whole folder across to the flash. 

Stonebridge heard Scott speak up.   “Suvorin’s guys know Matlock just as a name.  But they’ve had enough dealings with Toufeeq not to ask questions.”

“It’s a name to conjure with, then,” Sinclair said quietly.  “Whoever he is, he’s one of Knox’s lieutenants.”

“He could be a local gangster,” Baxter said.  “It’s a fairly common Muslim name,  and there’s a large Muslim minority in Cape Town.  One of the Americans?”

“Not according to Suvorin.” 

“It might not even be his real name,” Richmond said.   

“I want a face,” Dalton said. 

Stonebridge cast a sidelong glance at the laptop’s screen, to see the progress.  Pages flew across the file-writing box in a slow, slow, _slow_ procession, as the computer copied the folder to his drive.  He watched it guiltily, as the rest of the team moved away, very aware of Richmond just a few feet behind him. 

He jumped as Richmond spoke up.  “Now _here’s_ something interesting,” she announced, cheerfully. 

 _Jesus…_   Was she watching the file activity on the laptop through the Crib’s software?   “It’s me,” Stonebridge said, turning, the heat rising in his face. 

“What?” Richmond said, shooting him a confused frown. 

“It’s … er, wait, what?”  She wasn’t talking about the laptop, he realized.  He moved, so that his back blocked her view of the laptop screen.  “Nothing.”

“I don’t if you don’t,” she said.  She raised her voice.  “Major!” 

Dalton turned, and strode back to her again.  

“At least one of Penzer’s missing drivers isn’t dead.  William Moyo, thirty-two, Zimbabwean national.  Alive and still on the road.”

“How do we know this?”

Richmond’s eyes twinkled.  “Dead men don’t get pulled over by the traffic police for moving violations.”

“Where?”

“Right here in Cape Town.  Gunner’s Circle.” Richmond sat back in her chair.  “It’s an industrial area, close to the Cape Town Market.  It’s a hub for trucking.”

“Truck driver at a truck stop,” Scott said.  “Figures.”

“His cell-phone?” Sinclair asked. 

“His registered phone hasn’t been used.” Richmond shrugged. 

“Matlock’s people are too smart for that,” Dalton said.  “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Time for a meet-and-greet,” Sinclair said.

“Two teams:  Scott, and Stonebridge, and Richmond and Baxter,” Dalton said.  “And I want a better exfil than last time, people.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Baxter said, getting to his feet with a relieved air.  “I’ll take the Conquest.”

* * *

  

Baxter steered the Conquest from Viking Way into the adjoining Gunner’s Circle, and turned left.  He pulled the Conquest off the side of the road.  Stonebridge got out of the back seat, aware of Scott getting out the other side of the car.  Without a word, Baxter pulled off, and steered off out of sight in the other direction. 

The Conquest now wore temporary decals for a non-existent car insurance company.  Baxter and Richmond were going to scan the other side of Gunner’s Circle. 

Another industrial area, Stonebridge thought to himself; but not nearly as pretty as the harbour.  The rumble of traffic bundling up and down Viking Way was a deep thrum in the background.  Table Mountain in the distance was a grey-green hulk, viewed side-on, and the smog seemed to press down on the sky. 

“Zero, Bravo Two.  Boots on the ground,” Stonebridge told Zero, through his radio. 

“ _Bravo Two, Zero, roger that.  Bravo Three, do you copy_?” 

“ _Bravo Three, copy Bravo Two.  ETA in two_ ,” Richmond’s voice said in his ear.  “ _Over and out_.”

“Start with the filling station,” Scott said, striding ahead.  He had the photograph of William Moyo in his hand.   They set off across the rubbish-dotted dying grass toward the bright yellow signage.

They approached the petrol attendants, who gave the photograph plenty of attention in the hope of attracting a tip, but eventually admitted that they didn’t know.  They tried the woman in the station shop, who glanced at it and went on to the next customer.  They tried the young men working at the car wash, one of whom accidentally flicked water from his squeegee over Scott.  His eyes went to the picture, flickered in recognition, and then his gaze skated away.  “Don’t know him.”

“He knows,” Stonebridge said, as they gave up on the filling station and walked further along the road.

“He’s not going to tell us, that’s for sure.” 

“He was definitely on this block?” 

“Corner of Gunner’s and Gerry Ferry Road; reckless driving.  He was here.”

They walked further.  Passers-by idling by gave the two of them a quizzical stare: two big white men walking in a place where big white men usually drove.  A woman walking with a big bag of bananas balanced on her head droned a hymn to herself as she trudged past them.

To their right, the grassy verge began to close in with a ragged line of temporary structures that had sprouted along the road like an accretion. 

The shacks and lean-tos had been cobbled together out of corrugated iron and old wooden cargo-pallets, and draped here and there with green shade-cloth.  In the deep shade of the lean-tos, boxes of fruit sat stacked in ranks, neatly laid out for sale; solid colour-blocks, of yellow and orange and green, fresh from the farms.  The trucks that had brought it here were parked on the road, or stood half-buried in the tangle of stalls.  The smell of overheated fruit hung heavily in the summer air. 

A scrawny dog lying under a car watched them go by, grinning in the heat.  Scott detoured over to it to scratch its ears, and the dog grinned wider at him and wagged its tail. 

“Man, I want a dog,” Scott said, coming back to join Stonebridge. 

“Get a cat,” Stonebridge advised. “They’re more independent, and they don’t mind if you leave them alone.”

“I don’t want a cat, I want a dog.  Didn’t realize how much I want a dog till I met the Pocket Rotties.” 

“You… with a dachshund.”

“Maybe not a Pocket Rotti.  Any dog, as long as it’s hairy and goes _woof_.”

“Your Pocket Rotties go _Arf, Arf, Arf_.”

“ _Any_ dog, dude.  I want to settle down.  Get a permanent address, get a dog.” 

“You want to settle down so that you can get a dog?”

“No, dickhead.  Settle down, _and_ get a dog.  Among other settle-down-ish things.   I’ve done the highways and byways.  Now it’s time to settle down.”

“Go home?” 

“Yeah, one way or another.” 

There was another filling station further down the road, in the name of another giant petrol company.  They walked there, trying a few of the car-related shops along the way. 

At the other truck stop, no-one knew Moyo either – or so they said.  They went into Dino’s Fish and Chips, AKA Dino’s Truck-Inn, AKA Dino’s Take-aways – the painted signage varied. 

The workers didn’t recognise Moyo, and made it clear they had no time for pests asking questions.  They glanced at the picture, and then away, and found work that they urgently needed to do.  The petrol attendants said they didn’t know him either.  They glanced at the picture, and then away, and found work that they urgently needed to do. 

Scott and Stonebridge walked around to the yard at the back of the building, but the repair-men working there over a large Tata engine declared they knew nothing, no, sorry, boss, never seen him before. 

Or so they said.  There was a sort of stolid blankness that told him they knew Moyo’s face very well.  Stonebridge noted the stiffness in each man’s shoulders, and the way their gazes seemed to meet across the repair bay. 

“Come on, he was here on Tuesday,” Stonebridge said, despairing.  “He worked for Penzatrek.  You, with the air-compressor… have you seen this man?”

“No, sir,” and again the eyes slid away without even looking at the picture. 

They walked out again, very aware of unfriendly eyes on them.  They could grab one of these men, and bash the information out of them… but not in broad daylight, not in the midst of friendly faces, and most definitely not while Section Twenty was supposed to have ‘gone dark.’

“Zero,” Scott said, pressing his finger to his chest, and scrunching up his face with the reluctance to deliver bad news.  “Reckon we’ve found our target’s favourite restaurant, but no-one here knows a thing.  We’re getting Omerta all round.” 

“ _Roger that_.”

“And his favourite restaurant looks like a shithole,” Scott added to Stonebridge, after he’d cut the connection.  “Think this place is connected?”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Stonebridge said.  “We’re outsiders, asking after one of theirs.  Force of habit.” 

Scott scrunched up his face; channelling McKayla Maroney again.  His eyes went distant. 

“He’s _here_ ,” he declared, suddenly.  “Asshole’s here, and they all know it.  And he’s told ‘em all to dummy up.”

Stonebridge gave him a glance, but said nothing. 

Of the two of them, Stonebridge might be faster, younger, stronger, fitter … and above all, a non-smoker.  But he had to admit, there were times when Scott’s brain worked just a _sliver_ of a second faster than his. 

Scott had deduced that Julian Buckley had spotted them, based on nothing more than the fact that he’d moved his rear-view-mirror.  Scott had predicted that someone would assassinate their prisoner in Vienna.  Scott had worked out that Stonebridge was involved with Kate within a week of meeting them, when no-one else in Section Twenty had noticed for eleven months.

Scott was either psychic, or Sherlock Holmes; but either way, those flashes of intuition had been field-tested often enough for Stonebridge to trust them. 

Moyo _was_ here, somewhere. 

They stood, and looked around. 

“ _Zero, Bravo Three_ ,” he heard Richmond say, reporting in.  “ _We’ve got nothing_.”

There was a caravan standing on the corner, propped up on the verge.  It was an old-fashioned lozenge-shaped Gypsey, its white mouldings battered with age.  A Coca-Cola poster was stuck up in the front window.  He licked his lips.  He was hot, and thirsty, and a bottle of water suddenly seemed like a good idea.

How often was that caravan there?  If it was here on a Sunday afternoon, the chances were it was here all week too. 

“I know someone else around here who knows all, sees all,” Stonebridge said.  He gestured with his head at the food caravan, and started walking toward it. 

“Feel like a drink, Mr Shaw?” he said. 

“Don’t mind if I do, Mr Renfield,” Scott said, falling in alongside him. 

The caravan had an open shutter propped open, providing shade for the service hatch.  There was an African man inside.  He turned around, and looked down on them from between the glass cases of soggy samosas and the wire rack of crisp packets.  He greeted them with a deep voice,  “Eh-yes?”

“Hey there,” Stonebridge greeted.  “I’ll have a bottle of water.  And you?” he asked Scott. 

“I’ll have the closest you’ve got to a good American beer,” Scott said, turning his back and scanning the road behind Stonebridge. 

“Huh.”  Stonebridge turned back to the hatch.  “Make those _two_ bottles of water,” he said.  He took out a banknote and put it on the damp counter.  The vendor leaned down out of sight, and put two bottles of water on the counter, and then turned away with the change to his till.  

There was a Tanzanian flag stuck to the side of the samosa-case.  “ _Hujambo_ ,” Stonebridge said in Swahili. 

The man twitched in surprise in being greeted in Swahili.  He turned around and replied, “ _Sijambo! Habari gani?_ ” 

“I’m fine,” Stonebridge replied, in the same language.  “And how are you?”

African culture demanded an exchange of polite greetings – never just a plain ‘hello,’ but a back-and-forth pattern of hello-how-are-you-I’m-fine-and-you…? 

“I’m fine,” the vendor said.  He was looking at Stonebridge with the pleased and surprised expression of an immigrant hearing his own language when he least expects it.  He’d dropped the boredom of a shopkeeper dealing a customer – here one minute, gone forever the next.  He was looking at Stonebridge closely for the first time.   “My name is Godfrey.”

“My name is Michael.  Where are you from, Godfrey?” Stonebridge asked, pressing his advantage. 

“Kilwa,” Godfrey said.  “And you?” 

“London,” he said. 

“I did not think you looked like a South African,” Godfrey said.  “Where did you learn to speak Swahili?”

“In Kenya.  I worked there,” he lied.  Actually, he’d learned it as part of his training in the SAS.  They all spoke more than just English: one’s ability to survive in-country and gather intelligence would be severely hampered if one was restricted to point-and-grunt.  “How long have you been in Cape Town?” 

“Ehhh,” he shook his head.  “Four years.  But I want to go home, soon, as soon as I can afford it.  There is money here, in South Africa, but these people don’t like foreigners very much,” he nodded, wisely.

That had to be the understatement of the year, Stonebridge said.  South Africans disliked foreigners to the extent of setting them alight during fits of homicidal xenophobia. 

“We’re just passing through,” he said, gesturing to Scott.  “Actually, we’re looking for someone.  Maybe you can help us.” 

“It is always good to help someone who speaks your own language.” 

He took out the picture of Moyo, and almost folded it out on the counter before he realized he probably shouldn’t be too overt about it.  “Have you seen this man?”  He passed the picture up. 

Godfrey picked it up.  “Yes.” He barely had to look at the picture.  “Moyo.  He’s right over there.”  He pointed toward the back of the caravan, and Stonebridge realized he was actually indicating the direction of the fruit stalls and shacks on the other side of the road.  “He has a shack next to the carthorse.”

“You,” Stonebridge said, grinning at him, and putting the picture away.  “You are a star.  You have been a big, big help.”

“Eh,” the man’s face rumpled up in a sudden frown.  “If people know I told you …”

“Don’t worry.  We’ll pretend we’ve found him by accident.  I know how it is for a foreigner.” 

“That Moyo is a foreigner too,” the man said.  “He’s from Zimbabwe, but he’s a bad one.  They’re all bad, at that place.”

“Yes, we think so too.  Moyo is a very bad man, but we’ll take him away with us, if we can.”

“Maybe I should move my caravan to the other side, tomorrow.”

“Maybe you should do that, Godfrey.”

Scott was still waiting patiently for him when he said goodbye to Godfrey and walked away from the caravan. 

“Zero,” Stonebridge spoke into his radio, facing Scott so that Scott could hear as well.  “We have a lead.  Fast food vendor says Target is in the fruit stalls, near to the pony.”

“I didn’t know you spoke the local,” Scott said. 

“I don’t.  That was Swahili,” Stonebridge said.  “Didn’t you see the Tanzanian flag?”

“Nope.”  Scott drank.  “Good call, buddy.”

“ _Bravo Two, please say again after fruit stalls_?”  Sinclair asked.

“Zero, I say again, Target is close to the pony.  Four-legged animal, Papa Oscar November Yankee.”

Scott said, “Heh-heh-heh-heh,” in quiet glee, and drank from his bottle of water. 

“ _Roger that_ ,” Sinclair replied.

“Let’s go meet and greet,” Stonebridge said.  “We’ll find the guy by accident, so Godfrey doesn’t catch hell from his neighbours.”

The stalls alongside the road were an informal jumble of temporary structures.  The hawkers who had watched them with disinterest now became very friendly, when they realized that Scott and Stonebridge were examining their bananas and boxes of peaches.  They ambled along the road, ducking in and out of the shaded stalls. 

“Hello.  We’re looking for a friend of ours.  Have you seen him?  Here’s his picture.”

Sinclair spoke up.  “ _No eyes on pony – but there’s a trough and a small paddock a hundred metres to your_ _one o’clock_.”

They took a tour down an alleyway between stalls, through a gap between the wooden-pallet walls, to the back side of the stalls.  It was a mess back here.  Discarded junk lay heaped against the haphazard walls. 

“Hello, there – d’ye speak English?  We’re looking for a friend – William Moyo.  Have you seen him?”

They went down the next little alleyway, and Stonebridge ambled across to a rank of bananas – all green – as if he’d heard them calling him and wanted to find out what they had to say.  Scott leapfrogged him, passing across to a pole propped across the alleyway to function as a gate. 

“Hey, buddy,” he called over his shoulder.  “A horse.”

Stonebridge walked over to him. 

There was a stocky bay pony standing hipshot in the shade of a corrugated iron lean-to, regarding them with ears of mild interest.  

Its paddock was no more than a narrow open space, fenced by the walls of the stalls and shipping containers around it.  Its water trough was a sawn-off oil drum lying on its side, and the remains of a hay net had been shaken out all over the sand.    

“That’s a pony,” Stonebridge corrected. 

“Does that count as a skinny pony, or a fat pony?” Scott asked. 

“That counts as a skinny pony,” Stonebridge said.  “Although he looks in good condition.” 

The pony wasn’t fat, but its brown hide was shiny, and covered fit muscles.  It lost interest in its visitors, and its ears cycled backward into an expression of sleepy indolence. 

Stonebridge ducked under the rail, and walked across the makeshift paddock to an open doorway in an old shipping container.  “Hello there,” he called. 

“Horse, not mine!” grunted a voice inside. 

“We’re looking for a friend of ours.  William Moyo? Have you seen him around?”

There was a footstep, and a movement inside the dim doorway, and suddenly Stonebridge found himself looking into the photograph he held in his hand. 

“Eh-yes?”

Stonebridge looked into the man’s bright eyes, and smiled.  “We’ve been looking for you.  We’ve got a message for you from Toufeeq.”

Moyo inhaled sharply.  “Mr Toufeeq!” He smiled broadly.  “A man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life,” he recited, solemnly, and waited. 

“Er-r-r,” Stonebridge said, blankly.  A recognition code of some sort… a recognition code he had no idea how to answer. 

Moyo frowned at him.  “A man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life,” he repeated slowly. 

“Look, we don’t have time for that,”  Stonebridge said.  “Who else knows you’re here, eh?”  He was aware of Scott close behind him. 

Moyo held his ground.  “A man possessed …” he insisted. 

“Fine!” Scott barked, shoving himself forward.  “Don Jose Blah-Blah-Blah  desired passionately for his country: peace, prosperity… and, um, blah-blah?  That’s enough?” 

“No.”

“For fuck’s sake!”  Scott barked.  “Forget the fucking Nostromo.  We don’t have time for that James Bond shit. Toufeeq sent us.”

“You’re supposed to say it,” Moyo insisted.

“Listen, Toufeeq’s got a job for you.  Do you want to call him and say you kept him waiting because you were waiting for the right line?”

“Eh, no,”  Moyo shook his head, his eyes still narrow with some suspicion.  Scott reached up for Moyo’s shoulder, chivvying him, and Moyo took the first step onto the flattened cardboard he used as a doormat. 

“We’ve got a load for you to take up with you tonight.”

“Where?” 

“Same place you took the first truck.  And you gotta go now, we’ve got the load waiting for you.  Come on.  We’ll take you there.” 

“Do you need to grab a bag or something?” Stonebridge said.  He reached up to his radio and squeezed the control to transmit.   

“No, why?”  Moyo let himself be steered.  “It’s only overnight.”

“Yeah, you can turn around and come straight back again.” 

“Where did you say the load was?”

“Milnerton.” 

“Milnerton?”  Moyo stopped walking and shook Scott’s hand off.  “No way.” 

“Yes, Milnerton.  Come on.”

But Moyo was already backing up, digging in his heels.    “Give me the line,” Moyo said. 

“We don’t have time for that,” Scott said.  “Let’s go.” 

Scott reached out for his elbow, and Moyo hooked up his arm, throwing his hand off. “Give me the line!”  he shouted. 

“Fuck!” Scott said.  “All right!  Don Jose Blah-Blah-Blah desired passionately for his country peace prosperity and as the end of Fifty Years of Misrule an honourable place in the comity of civilized nations!”  He banged it off, staccato, in a single long breath.  “Is that good enough?”  

“No!” Moyo threw himself backward, but Stonebridge was already travelling with him.  His hand hooked around Moyo’s wrist and yanked his arm back, and he turned Moyo with weight and speed and surprise so that in less than a second he had Moyo bent double with his left arm hauled up behind his back. 

Moyo squawked in shock and outrage, and then raised his voice to a bellow of alarm. 

Stonebridge yelled for the benefit of his radio, “Bravo Three, we need exfil, now!” 

“ _On our way!”_  

Stonebridge heard the pony snort in alarm behind him, and the thud of hooves as it began to pace anxiously on the other side of the paddock. 

Scott was on Moyo’s other side,  and he grasped Moyo’s jacket and rifled his pockets with the speed of great practice.  “No gun,” he said, and Stonebridge saw him flip a cellphone into his own pocket.  Then Scott took hold of Moyo’s other arm, and between them they began frogmarching him toward the road.  “Come on, you.  We’re gonna have a little chat.” 

Stonebridge used his leverage on Moyo’s arm to propel him across the paddock.  Moyo kicked his heels, and tried to plunge his body forward in an attempt to free his arm.  He roared again at the top of his lungs. 

“Fuck, shut him up,” Stonebridge said, as Moyo tried to kick him. 

“Should’ve brought dope,” Scott grunted.  He let go of Moyo’s arm and reached around his front to get a chokehold on his throat to throttle him into silence and submission.  The shout abruptly stopped short. 

Stonebridge grunted as a work boot caught him in the kneecap.  And that was when it all went to hell. 

Two men in grey overalls came around the corner of the paddock.  They stopped short when they saw the three of them grappling.  “William!” one of them said. 

“What the fuck you doing?” 

They ducked under the paddock rail, and charged over.  Scott abandoned his grip on Moyo and turned to face them.  The nearest man charged straight at Scott, who turned to face him, shifted to anticipate, decided to take him out, and struck first with a side kick to the centre of his chest that blew him backwards onto the sand like a doll.  Observe, orient, decide, act; it was over in a fraction of a second. 

The second man saw his friend taken out, and stopped just before he reached Scott.  He was quicker, and smarter, and he reversed his direction as Scott reached out for him.  He backed up across the paddock with quick footwork, and just as Scott closed on him, his hand came out and around with a knife. 

The knife flashed in the air, aiming for Scott’s belly.  Scott jumped back, and then jumped forward.  He closed with his attacker, inside the turning circle of the knife, faster than the knife could come back on its backswing.  The two men grappled, and arms flew.  The knife spun in the air and fell in the sand.  A slam of the heel of Scott’s hand to his jaw, and the second man toppled over backward. 

“Help me!” Moyo blared from the crook of Stonebridge’s elbow.  “Help me, man, help me, they taking me away!” 

“Shut up!”  Stonebridge moved to take up a chokehold, but Moyo made a determined heave, throwing himself, and Stonebridge’s hand closed on his jacket instead of his throat.  Moyo turned, threw himself sideways, and suddenly Stonebridge was holding a jacket with no-one inside it.  “Fuck!” 

“Help me!”  Moyo scrambled away, on all fours across the sand, before he made his feet and broke into a run.  The pony saw him coming and fled to the right. 

Stonebridge threw aside the jacket and leaped after him.  “Scott!” 

His fingers reached out for Moyo’s arm, and then he was slammed by a solid wall of brown that threw him bodily sideways.  He hit the ground, hard, and then something heavy slammed into his stomach, thumping the air out of his lungs. 

He lay on the ground, stunned, trying to suck air into his chest.  He got his arms under him, and pushed his upper body up.  His mouth gaped open, and he pressed one hand to his stomach, trying to push his own diaphragm back into normal function. 

“Eeeeh…” he wheezed, but nothing happened.  Black dots buzzed around the edges of his vision.  “Eeeeeh…”

Scott was there, above him. 

“Bravo Two is down, Target is in the wind,” Scott barked.  “You ‘kay, buddy?”

Stonebridge could only point to his own chest, and wheeze. 

“Fucking asshole horse!”  Scott swore. 

“ _Bravo One, state your position!_ ” 

“The fucking horse stood on Bravo Two!”

Stonebridge held up a hand, and Scott grasped his wrist unasked, and heaved him to his feet.  The air was beginning to fill his lungs again _– in – out – in – out._   There was breath in him yet, and his diaphragm was beginning to remember what it was supposed to do.  _In – out – in – out._   The black dots were fading, and he looked around. 

Scott’s first opponent was getting to his feet,  and there were more of them coming around the corner.  The pony was throwing itself around the perimeter of the paddock in a panic.  Stonebridge pushed himself fully upright when he noticed the sound of angry voices.  There were a cluster of men standing on the other side of the gate, gesturing angrily. He could see suspicion on their faces, the flat ugliness of resentment, and then the first one ducked under the rail.  A few more followed. 

“Policeman, policeman!” one of the others began to chant.  “Policeman, policeman!” 

“They sure look don’t look happy,” Scott said. 

Stonebridge reached for his radio, and croaked into it.  “Zero, where’s the Target?” 

“ _Target is moving west through the shacks, parallel to the road._ ”

“We’re going,” Scott announced.  He led off to the fence Moyo had vaulted in his flight, ducking the circling pony.  He vaulting over the rail the way Moyo had.  Stonebridge followed, scrambling awkwardly, and still fighting for breath. 

They found themselves running through another alleyway between lines of shacks.  Stonebridge was getting his breath back, but pain was making his run wobbly and uncoordinated.  Voices rose behind him, but he followed Scott doggedly. 

“ _Target is ahead of you_ ,” Sinclair said. 

They zigzagged through the crazy layout of the stalls, jinking this way and that.  There was a crash behind them, and suddenly a car’s alarm was singing off to the sky. 

“ _Target has broken left back onto the road.  He’s going east_ ,” Sinclair said.  “ _Take a left turn in five metres.  And move it up, there are seven men close behind you_.” 

They broke into a cross alley, and dashed through a narrow gap between stalls.  Their feet touched tar again.  They were out of the stalls, back in the road.  Stonebridge zigzagged to get around a man on a bicycle, and saw the T-shirt of Moyo twenty metres ahead of them.  He’d doubled back, and was running back in the direction of the pony. 

“There,” he pointed, and they began to run after him.

Moyo stopped, and turned to face them. He started shouting and waving his arms in their direction.

His language meant nothing to Stonebridge, but his angry whooping tone meant everything.  He was accusing them of something heinous, something outrageous.  He was raising the hue and cry against them – and in a city where dozens of people were killed every year in vigilante action he was getting a receptive audience. 

People began to spill out onto the road.  Some merely stared, but others were already beginning to move in Scott and Stonebridge’s direction.  

“Fuck me,” Scott said. 

“This is turning into a mob,” Stonebridge said.

Behind them, the men who had been chasing them burst out onto the road, and brought more onlookers out with them. 

“Bravo Three, where’s our exfil?” Scott barked.

“No exfil,” Stonebridge said, “We can still get this guy!  Come on!”  He began running down the road.  “Get out of my way!” he shouted at a bystander who seemed still confused by the situation.  “Moyo!” 

“ _Eyes on Target_ ,” Sinclair’s voice.  “ _Twenty metres ahead of you_.” 

“We’ve got him.”

Mobs took time to get together.  They needed time to build a common situational awareness, needed to develop a common emotional state, and acquire a shared goal.  The mob stirring around them was still confused, still unsure of its goal.  They could use that time of confusion to get Moyo and get out before the crowd mobilised. 

More people were wandering out in response to Moyo’s shouting, but Moyo saw Stonebridge coming, and realized that his salvation would take too long.  He whirled and leaped back into the cover of the shacks again. 

“After him!”

Stonebridge raced into the alleyway after him.  He sprang over a box of fruit, darted around the tail of a pickup truck.  He caromed off a wall of pallet-wood, and around a narrow corner.  A luggage trailer, and he jumped over the tow bar, and Scott took the other way around the trailer’s tail. 

“ _He’s still ahead of you_.”

Another narrow corner.  He nearly collided with an African woman, who shrieked and hit his shoulder with her fist.  He eeled around her, and then heard Scott on his heels have the same collision.  “Get out of the way!”

Junk – vaulted.  Broken pallets, jumped without stopping.  His breath was coming hard in his chest, painfully.  His soles skidded on rotten rubbish, nearly tumbling him into a thorny bush but he caught his feet and ran on.  Shouting arose, ahead, and around him; angry voices in the air close by.  Just  on the other side of these shacks here was an angry crowd, and he broke into another open space between shacks in time to see Moyo disappear around the far corner.

“Gotcha!” Scott barked, close behind him. 

“He’s going back to the road!” 

“ _No go!_ ” Sinclair said.  “ _No go!  Stand down!  Do not follow!_ ”

“Fuck!” barked Scott.  Stonebridge slowed down, staring at the corner Moyo had taken. 

“ _There are twenty very angry civilians ahead of you!_ ” 

“ _Exfil on our way, ETA on_ _Viking Way_ _two minutes_.”

There were no words for his frustration.  There was no vent for his anger.  Moyo was gone, and Stonebridge threw his head back and roared his rage at the sandy alleyway and the corrugated metal shack in front of him.  It was unacceptable!  It was intolerable! 

“We can get this guy!” Scott yelled at Zero. 

“ _I said Stand down!_ ”  Sinclair said, but Stonebridge was in no mood for orders.  He dived around the corner.  He heard Scott close on his heels. 

They broke back onto the road.  Moyo was further along.  He hadn’t doubled back. 

Behind them, there was a shout, and a chorus of replies.  Just a few metres away, a group of men were coming up, a wall of anger, and as Stonebridge turned to look at them they broke into a run.  “Policeman… policeman… policeman…”  A few long staves of wood were raised, and jerked in the air…

What the fuck had Moyo told these guys about them to get them so angry?

They had tools to deal with angry men waving sticks.  But that would mean stopping and turning on them, using their weapons to drive the mob back with violent threats and shouts and raw intimidation, and they just didn’t have time for that and catching up to Moyo.  The priority was Moyo – crowd control was not the mission. 

“Run!” Stonebridge said, and a second later they were sprinting after Moyo. 

Moyo ran.

Scott and Stonebridge ran.

The mob ran after Scott and Stonebridge. 

Moyo threw himself into the shacks again.  Stonebridge raced in between the narrow walls, barely slowing.  Scott was close on his heels, and they charged down the alleyway between the narrow walls.  At the other end, the passage turned left, then doglegged back, and then opened onto a stretch of dead grass and sand. 

They’d broken out of the other side of the strip of fruit stalls and shacks, and into the narrow strip of land between them and the buzzing traffic of Viking Way. 

Moyo was ahead of them, his T-shirt like a flag waving them on.  He was heading across the grass under the trees, aiming for the busy road; but he was wallowing slightly, not as fit as his pursuers.  He turned his head, and saw them coming. 

Perhaps he saw that they were gaining on him – faster, fitter, and stronger – because he stopped heading at a closing angle to the road, and instead jinked to run straight at it. 

Scott took up his chase, pounding down Moyo’s bearing, while Stonebridge peeled off to the left to get to the road faster.  They had Moyo boxed in against the traffic.  Scott was on his right, between him and the cover of the shacks, and Stonebridge was hammering directly behind him along the verge.  He was trapped against the road, caught on the lee shore of the roaring traffic.

Moyo reached the edge of the road at the same time that Stonebridge did.  The traffic roared along at a good eighty kilometres an hour just to his side.  Stonebridge saw Moyo pause, just for a second.  He saw him glance at Stonebridge with wide eyes, and saw his head turn in the direction of the oncoming traffic.  He saw the decision made in Moyo’s face.

“Don’t!” Stonebridge shouted at him, his hand shooting out as if he could grab Moyo from twenty metres away. 

Moyo ran between cars, trying to leap through the gap in traffic.  The oncoming white car braked hard, its bonnet digging down, brakes squealing.  Moyo leaped across in front of it, and sprang across the opposite lane.

Stonebridge flinched, squeezing his eyes shut. 

There was the scream of brakes, interrupted by a solid _BANG_. 

It was a terribly complete sound; unique, indivisible, and indelible. 

Stonebridge opened his eyes. 

The green minibus taxi had been overtaking the white Toyota in the teeth of the oncoming lane.  It was still in motion, yawing wildly and skidding to a shrill stop in the opposite lane.  The lettering across the windscreen read The Happy Apple, but there was nothing happy about the way the driver was throwing the door open and jumping out.  There was a smear pattern, black against green, over the CATA sticker on its front. 

It took Stonebridge a moment to find Moyo.  He’d landed on the grass on the far side of the road.  As Stonebridge looked at him, and started moving along the verge toward him, he suddenly moved.  He was alive. 

The side door of the taxi ran open, and its passengers started falling out, flapping their arms and shouting.  They ran around the front of the minibus, and crowded around Moyo. 

The white Toyota pulled over and came to a stop just beyond Stonebridge.  Traffic was still passing on both sides, braking hard to slew around the stopped taxi. 

Stonebridge was about to dart across the road and take charge of the scene when Scott caught up with him and grabbed his arm.  “Stop!”  He turned, and saw that Scott was staring back over his shoulder at something behind him. 

He turned. 

The twenty men who had been chasing them were spilling out of the shacks and heading across the grass toward them.  The taxi’s passengers were crowding around Moyo, and they were starting to look across the road at Scott and Stonebridge.  There were almost as many taxi passengers on that side of the road as there were angry bystanders on this side of the road. 

The mob behind them shouted, and waved their arms. 

Blame was being apportioned.  Some of the taxi’s passengers suddenly moved to the edge of the road,  clearly looking for the chance to nip across between traffic. 

“Where’s that exfil?” Scott shouted into his radio.  “Zero, we need exfil, now.” 

The driver of the white Toyota had jumped out and was standing close to Stonebridge.  She had her hands in her hair, watching the other side of the road.  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…”

“Get back in your car!” Stonebridge roared at her.  “Get back in your car, and call an ambulance!”

The mob from the shacks was breaking into a run.  The traffic was slowing, as drivers took the chance to rubberneck at the taxi and its passengers.

Another car pulled over, just behind the white Toyota, and this one had the blue stripes of a police car.  Its blue lights began to flash. 

They needed an exfil, now! 

And then the yellow Conquest came barrelling around the green taxi.  It ran onto the side of the road, its tyres roaring, sand flying as it came to a sharp stop.  The back door popped open. 

“Get in!” Baxter shouted. 

 

……………………….

 

Major Dalton was not pleased. 

“That’s the second contact who’s gone splat on this team in two days!”  Dalton barked.  “This isn’t good enough, people.”

“No, ma’am,” Michael said.    

Moyo had distinctly gone _bang,_ not _splat_ , Scott thought; but he kept his mouth shut.  Ol’ Stonehenge was standing like he was practicing being his own nickname, with his back straight, and his gaze up, and a granite hardness to his jaw.   

“What went wrong out there?” Dalton demanded.

There was a momentary silence while they all thought about it. 

What made Special Forces ‘special’ wasn’t the high training, the cute technology, or that they were miraculous superheroes who never made mistakes.  What made Special Forces special was that they never stopped learning, never stopped practicing, never stopped fine-tuning their tactics; and any mistakes that happened were confronted, talked over, picked apart in detail so that _particular_ fuck-up never happened again.  Mistakes happened; good soldiers learned from them.   

“It was my fault,” Michael said.  “I screwed up my submission hold.  I thought I had him, and then he wriggled out of his own jacket.”  Richmond inhaled.  “Secondary team was too far away from the primary team.  We were too far to provide support.”   

“We should have put him in a choke hold and knocked him out,” Scott said.  “We’d have got him out without raising the alarm.  Instead he yelled, and all his buddies showed up to help him, and that’s when it all went to hell.”

“We lost tactical command of the ground,” Michael said.   

“And then the horse stood on Michael,” Scott said. 

“Pony,” Stonebridge corrected; forever the nitpicker. 

Then again, Scott couldn’t really blame him for taking the difference personally, after having the fucking thing stand on him.  There had to be a difference in practice between a few hundred pounds of pony jumping on your ass, and nearly half a ton of horse.  Poor ol’ Michael Weighbridge… 

“We weren’t expecting Moyo to be surrounded by his people,” Sinclair said.  “We assumed he was alone.  If we’d foreseen that, we’d have gone in by night and picked him out.  It was an intelligence failure, as much as a tactical one.” 

“That ain’t all,” Scott said.  “Moyo had a recognition code.” 

“A man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life,” Michael quoted.  “We didn’t know the reply, and he spooked.”  

“A quote?”  Dalton asked. 

“Yeah,” Scott said.  “It’s a line from Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.”

“You’re certain?” Dalton asked. 

Scott sighed.  He wrapped his arms around the back of his head.  “I keep _telling_ you people I have a photographic memory… It’s a line from Nostromo.  I gave him the next line, but that’s not it.” 

“That damned book again,” Sinclair sighed. 

“This means that Knox’s people are numerous enough that they don’t all know each other by sight.” 

“Toufeeq’s people,” Scott said.  “Moyo was expecting Toufeeq.”

“Knox has divided his people into two,” Sinclair said.  “One under Matlock, one under Toufeeq.” 

And if so, which group had the nukes?  They hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Matlock since the helicopter took off – was he still in Cape Town?  Perhaps he was with Knox, and the mysterious Toufeeq had control of the nukes? 

He could almost see the thought working its way through Weighbridge’s skull.  _Where was Craig Hanson?_   Was he with Toufeeq or with Matlock? 

“Were you photographed?”  Dalton said.

“Not on the road,” Michael said.  

“There were security cameras up in the filling stations,” Scott said, remembering.  “If anyone goes through them, there we’ll be.” 

“We’re lucky there aren’t security cameras in the trains,” Sinclair said.  “Or we’d already be on the front page of this afternoon’s Cape Argus.” 

“Richmond?”

“I can try to access the security footage remotely,” Richmond said.  “If the cameras are run through an Internet-enabled computer, I can wipe it.”

“Do it.” 

“So we’re back to Square One,” Sinclair said. 

 

* * *

 

 

There were no perimeter cameras on the roof.  Stonebridge opened the door, and climbed out.  He sat down on the ground, his backside on the cement roof and his back against the side of the stairwell. 

It was Sunday evening in Cape Town.  The sun was beginning to sink through a haze of city smog toward the mountains.  It was the colour of sherry through his sunglasses.  The day’s heat radiated up from the roof under him, in pleasant contrast to the evening breeze.  The traffic grumbled away in the distance. 

The team would assume he’d come up here to get away from Scott’s non-stop chatter, if they noticed him gone at all.  The roof was flat, but punctuated by skylights.  Theirs was the tallest roof in the area, and he could sit here undisturbed and unobserved. 

Today had been a fuckup.  A screw-up.  An embarrassing disaster.  The mess might have been compounded by his lack of sleep, but he didn’t think the cause was that simple.  He had lost his fighting edge.  He had lost his mojo.

He’d been in lethal danger last night, and he hadn’t cared.   

All that was left of his will to fight was a thirst for vengeance.  As long as he got his hands around Craig Hanson’s throat, he cared about nothing else.

It was a strange feeling.  He had nothing to fight for, nothing to make him want to live.  It did not feel real, this strange feeling of disconnection from his own fate.  It felt as if his own life was a disembodied thing, a creation of his own imagination, sitting beside him but not tangible. 

It was a liberating feeling, but not in a pleasant way.  He felt as if he could float away, twinkle out of existence like a soap bubble.  He didn’t feel, therefore he did not exist. 

He needed something to touch, to convince himself that he was still here.  He needed something new, something external, something to pierce the bubble.   

Unconsciousness was better than pain, pain was better than grief … but at the very least he could distract himself.  He needed to probe his discomfort, distract his mind, overwhelm himself, so that he might at least _feel_. 

He took out his laptop, and booted it up, and shifted its screen on his lap so that the last of the sun didn’t reflect from it.  When it was up, he loaded his USB into the side, and copied the folders he’d taken from the Manhattans machine across to it. 

Porn. 

And not just _any_ porn, but a specific kind of porn; the kind of stuff he’d looked at a few times secretly as a gawky teenager, late at night, taking care not to let his grandmother see what he was doing. 

He’d looked only a few times.  He’d been fascinated, but equally terrified by what he saw, and then he’d decided that he didn’t dare look any further.  There was plenty of porn with girls on the Web, even in the nineties. 

Girls: just as enjoyable, but with far less repercussions if he got caught.  And girls were far less dangerous, in terms of his half-formed terror that  looking at pictures of boys might somehow … _stick_ … and turn him into Duncan Brown, the only boy in high school who had plucked his eyebrows, and _moisturised._  

Girls were safe, and he had resolved to look at girls only.  Promised himself that he would be nothing like Duncan Brown if he looked at girls only.

And then before his teenage resolution ran out, he’d met Kerry over the school holidays.  He’d fallen wildly in love, and the rest was moot.  Apart from the time he’d spent with Kate, Kerry had been his whole sex life.

But Kerry was gone… 

He shook his head, adamantly.  Now was not the time to get all soggy and emotional.  He refocused on the laptop. 

Pictures, first.  There was no hurry to move on to videos immediately.  He changed the file view to thumbnails, so that he got advanced warning of what he was about to see, and opened the first one that looked interesting.

He closed it immediately.  Pinkish naked bodies, with giant penises, lying wrapped up together.  The picture had been shot in full light, and showed everything.  It was too much, too bare and harsh. 

And then he reconsidered.  If he was going to honeytrap Scott, he was going to _have_ to look.  He steeled himself to have a good long look, and opened the file again. 

He turned his head on one side.  It didn’t look very comfortable, let alone erotic. 

He closed the first picture, and opened a few more. 

 _That_ one he’d done with Kerry.  That one looked terribly strained and uncomfortable.  That one was both covered in too much fake tan.  How did one thrust, at that angle?  That one … good grief, was that a real penis or some sort of prosthesis…? 

He found himself skimming through picture after picture.  A few he stared at a little longer – trying to imagine this part, trying to get an idea of what was happening in that part.  Now that he’d made up his mind what he was going to do, he needed some idea of _what_ he was going to do. 

But, he realized, none of them were really appealing pictures.  The mechanics of the acts themselves were simple enough to understand.  But none of the pictures made him really want to look closer, lose himself in them, and imagine himself touching them.

In fact, none of these men looked particularly attractive.  They looked like Ken dolls; not _men,_ dammit.  He’d seen more interesting men laying bricks in Bradford, never mind laying each other.

He realized, to his relief, that they were all as unattractive as Duncan Brown.  _These_ were the boys who had plucked their eyebrows in high school, and _moisturised._  

He was rather relieved to find himself distinctly un-aroused.  His body didn’t so much as twitch.  He was, to his relief, not at all interested in gay men. 

He was as straight as he’d ever been.  _Good._   He could do what he was going to do with a clear conscience. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Ma’am,” Stonebridge said, catching up with Dalton and Sinclair as they were about to leave the Crib for the night.  “Might I have a word with you?  In private?”

She narrowed her eyes.  “Something Major Sinclair can’t hear?”

He drew himself up to his full height.  “Ma’am, it relates to the special order you gave me on our arrival in Cape Town.”

She tipped her head back, her eyes widening with understanding.  But all she said was, “Ah.  Major Sinclair…?”  

Sinclair didn’t seem bothered at being tossed out of the conversation.  “I’ll see you in officers’ country, Major,” he said.  “Good night, Sergeant.”

“Good night, Major,” Stonebridge said. 

Sinclair headed out through the door, following Richmond and Baxter out into the night. 

Dalton turned to face him.  “You have my attention, Sergeant.” 

“I think you’re right about Scott.”

“In what sense?” 

“He’s talking about getting a dog.”

“A dog.”  One disbelieving eyebrow rose.  “How is he going to get a dog in Section Twenty?”

“That’s the point, ma’am: he can’t.  You’re right.  He _does_ want to go back to the States.” 

“Then it’s your duty to make sure that he knows he can get a dog in London as well.”

“Yes, ma’am, understood.  I’ve started actively working towards that goal.”

He saw understanding in her eyes.  “Good. I wish you the best of luck.”

He wandered back to the Crib and sat down. 

The Crib was their domain for the rest of the night. It was never left empty, ever, and the team rotated spending the night here.  With just six of them here, that meant one night on, two nights off, for two of them at a time.  He and Scott would make themselves as comfortable as they could on inflatable mattresses. 

The lights were low, the equipment turned down.  Here and there, a screensaver glowed, showing where some routine was still chugging away through incoming data, but the only station still live was Primary One.  With the lights down, the racks of equipment-boxes looked like derricks on a movie set. 

He’d heard Scott’s clumping boots, coming into the Crib. 

“Yo,” Scott said.   

“Hey, there,” he said. 

Scott sat down alongside him, snuggling his back against the chair so that the backrest squeaked.  He picked up his right foot and braced it across his left knee, flipped open a book on his thigh, opened it to a dog-ear, and began reading. 

Perhaps it was his recent examination of pictures of naked men, but he was suddenly hugely aware of the pattern of hair running down the back of Scott’s forearm, to his Paracord bracelet wrapped around his wrist. 

“That’s not a Lonely Planet,” he observed.

Scott turned the front cover of the book, so that he could see it.  “Background to the mission.”

“Nostromo,” Stonebridge read aloud. 

“Hey, _somebody’_ s gotta find out what it means,” Scott said. 

“Knox is as mad as a hatter,” Stonebridge disagreed.  “It probably means nothing.”

“Yeah, but…” Scott wagged the book, “this is part of his madness.  Or so says Sinclair, anyway.  _Mr Scott_ ,” Scott mimicked Sinclair’s gentle accent.  “ _I have a little homework for you to do…_ ” 

“Hmm,” Stonebridge said, looking at the book.  “Tell me something, Scott.”

“Yeah?”

“Did the Major give you this assignment _before_ you smoked in his car, or after…?”

Scott looked at the book in his hand, and his eyebrows lifted themselves towards his widow’s peak in sudden doubt. 

“Never mind,” Stonebridge said.

“Do you feel like a work-out?” Scott asked. 

“I worked out this morning,” Stonebridge said. 

“We need to practice submission holds, dude.  That thing with Moyo today was a fuck-up on so many levels.”

“Everything on this mission has been a fuck-up on so many levels,” Stonebridge said.  The yawning pit of despair opened itself beneath him.  “Everything that’s happened since you went to Somalia has been a fuck-up.  Losing Evans, losing Adonis, Daisy-Boy, Suvorin, Moyo...”

“Hey, we’re still in it to win it, buddy,” Scott said.  “Come on, practice with me.

It would be a good exercise to spar opposite Scott again.  Pure physical contest would clear his head; and even if it didn’t, Scott was right.  He needed the practice.  He couldn’t very well look at pictures anyway, with Scott sitting right next to him – and he couldn’t budge Scott without Scott noticing and becoming an inquisitive pest. 

“You’re on.”

They didn’t bother with putting down groundsheets or practice mats. 

The point of their exercises was to approach reality as closely as possible; to hone their moves and fine-tune their reactions so that when the real thing happened, the transition between practice and performance could be achieved as smoothly as possible.  There would be no practice mat to fall on in combat, and their bodies and minds had to be prepared for the impact of landing on rough surfaces. 

Stonebridge unbuttoned his shirt, and took off his boots, and laid them down on a chair. 

“Holy Hannah,” Scott said, and Stonebridge turned to look at what had surprised him. 

Scott was looking at his chest, and he looked down to see the purple smear of bruising all across the centre of his stomach. 

“Pony,” he said, tracing the bruise. 

“You’re lucky he just grazed you,” Scott said. 

“I didn’t feel very lucky at the time,” he said.  He began warming up with stretches, and then moved into a series of brisk callisthenics.  The bruise felt hot, and then the stiffness moved out of it. 

Scott took up a space on the other side of the factory floor, and stripped off his T-shirt and boots.  He didn’t bother with putting them neatly on a chair.   He didn’t bother with stretching.  He also didn’t bother with callisthenics.  He stood for a minute, his hands at his sides, breathing deeply, and then began flowing into a Tai Chi workout. 

Slow flowing movements,  careful balance, delicate poise – what the hell did the US Army teach their Delta Force guys?  Scott could and did run, he could and did work out, but his idea of ‘warming up’ was pretending to be a chrysanthemum, or a lotus flower, or whatever the hell he was doing. 

And then, as he always did, his movements slowly accelerated; still poised, but quicker and quicker, until he was moving in a sort of dance, and the flowing movements began blocks and lashing strikes.  Smooth, controlled, but the potential for lethal aggression was still there.  The tiger on his flank flickered in and out of Stonebridge’s view, rippling like a flag.  Stonebridge wasn’t even sure it was Tai Chi any more, or just a weird _kata_ of Scott’s own invention. 

Anyway, Stonebridge thought, just how arrogant did one have to be to invent one’s own _kata?_   Were proven techniques and tradition not good enough for Damien Scott? 

Scott’s movements were slowing, until finally he brought his arms into his sides, and bowed to Stonebridge, and only then did Stonebridge realize that he’d been standing and staring, his own callisthenics abandoned. 

“You ready?” Scott asked. 

“I’m ready.” 

Thirty minutes later, they were both breathing heavily, their bodies slick with sweat. 

They had practiced in slow motion, first: taking and breaking a variety of submission holds, rehearsing for the sake of muscle-memory.  Then they had begun to spar in earnest, at full speed, and almost full strength.  They had both taken falls, they had both tapped out …

Right now it was Stonebridge who was in trouble.  

Stonebridge galloped backward, as hard as he could, picking Scott up and slamming him back into the wall. 

“Ah-oof!” burst out past his ear, but the grip on his throat did not loosen.  Scott was sticking to his slippery back like a rodeo-rider.  In fact the impact had somehow let Scott’s right hand reach up and over the back of his head, and the pressure increased. 

His head was trapped.  His throat was closed.  He couldn’t breathe! 

If he didn’t free himself he would pass out. 

He tried turning his head left so that his windpipe lay in the crook of Scott’s left elbow, but Scott yanked up his head, aiming his chin high.  He couldn’t turn his head without breaking his neck.  And now he was in a blood choke, instead of an air choke.  He’d worsened his position.  Scott’s arm was closing like a hinge around his throat, tightening on the arteries in his neck.  He could feel the blood pumping in his skull. 

He had less than ten seconds to break the hold. 

He hooked up his right fist, and slammed his elbow into Scott’s side. Scott spasmed behind him but hung on, and little black dots were now sizzling at the edges of Stonebridge’s vision. 

Five seconds. 

He bent, using the strength in his back to plunge like a horse, and then reared back to slam Scott into the wall again. 

“Ah-oof!” Scott grunted, spasmed again, and then they were falling over backward.  Stonebridge landed painfully on his backside.  Scott’s legs had buckled under the violence of the body-slam.  Stonebridge took his chance.  He bucked, both legs against the concrete, trying to wrench himself free.  He was frantic for air, but the arms around his neck were like iron, and he heard Scott grunt, “Fuck you!”

He still had breath to swear in.  Stonebridge did not.  His head was trapped between Scott’s arms, his neck was being twisted painfully, and the little black dots were coming closer.  No good, no good; he was done. 

He unclenched his fist and slapped his palm on the strangling elbow, desperately. 

“Fuck,” Scott gasped in his ear.

 _Air…_ Stonebridge could breathe again.  He lay on his back, and gasped for air like a newborn.  He let his arms and legs fall limp at his sides, and just breathed. 

Scott lay half under him, on his back, still cradling Stonebridge’s head and neck as if in an embrace.  He could feel Scott’s chest jumping against his back with his panting.

“You ‘kay?” Scott rasped softly against his ear. 

He nodded, still breathless. 

“Heh,” Scott said, sounding very satisfied with himself.  He did not release the hold on Stonebridge’s throat.  In fact, he made no move whatsoever. 

“Best of seven?” Stonebridge rasped, when he’d caught his breath.  Scott was one up on him, but he could change that. 

“In a minute.” 

He waited. 

“I tapped out,” he said, just in case Scott had forgotten. 

“Yeah,” Scott agreed. 

He still didn’t move his arms.  One arm cradled the top of Stonebridge’s head.  The other was still locked around his throat.  Stonebridge had Scott’s upper arm pressed to his left jugular, and the forearm pressed to his right jugular.  He wasn’t being strangled, but he wasn’t free either.  He could feel Scott’s chest under him, feel his left leg under Stonebridge’s right.  The sweat was beginning to pool where they met. 

He raised his hand to grip Scott’s elbow just beneath his chin.  “Oy,” he said.  “I tapped out.  That means you have to let me go.” 

“Hey-hey-hey,” Scott chided, and the grip around his throat tightened suddenly; not strangle-tight, but a warning nonetheless.  “Tapping out means you submit.” 

“No, it doesn’t, it means, I quit, stop hurting me, let me up.”

“Yeah, like that Tuareg dude quit, and you let him up.”

“Oh, is _that_ what this is about?”

“If you like,” Scott said.  The arm over Stonebridge’s head moved, so that he was crowned with Scott’s hand instead.  “I’ll let you go when I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Fine, be like that then.” 

He put his hands on the concrete at his sides, and waited.  Even if he was lying with his back crooked, at least he had a big warm American to lean on.  Scott was sitting on cold concrete – _his_ back was pressed against bare brick, and sooner or later he would get tired. Stonebridge could wait.  He had nothing to look at but the room and the shut-down Crib, but at least that had to be more interesting than Scott’s view: the same room and the back of Stonebridge’s ear.

After a few minutes, he felt something moving against his head.  A rhythmic movement; and to his surprise he realized his head was being stroked by Scott’s thumb. 

“Oy,” he said, complaining, but the arm around his neck tightened slightly. 

“You tapped out,” Scott said, and he felt Scott move under him so that Scott’s mouth was close to his head, his breath warm on his ear.  “I do what I choose, and I _don’t_ choose to let you go.” And Scott’s thumb stroked his hair, very gently.

He held his breath.  All the hairs along the backs of his arms were standing straight, and all the hairs on the back of his neck prickled so stiffly he was almost sure Scott would be able to feel it. 

Scott’s hand moved again.  This time, it came down to the side of his face.  He felt fingertips on his cheek.  A finger traced the line of his jaw, and up again the side of his mouth. 

He wriggled, and again the warning arm across his throat tightened in silent threat. 

What was _this?_   “What are you doing?”

“What does it feel like I’m doing?” Scott said.  His mouth was so close to Stonebridge’s ear he could imagine the touch of lip on lobe at every syllable.  And then he _could_ feel Scott’s face against his, feel the warmth of his cheek and the scrape of his stubble.  It stung.

He remembered some of their recent conversations.  He’d learned things about Scott.  There were things that Scott liked that most men didn’t like  – and now, it seemed, he was learning about them, literally at first-hand.  He wasn’t sure if the jumping in his heart was from dread, or dreadful pleasure. 

He really, _really_ didn’t have to put up with this. 

He could fight the hold – again.  He wasn’t being tightly held, he had a chance of breaking out.  He could buck, take Scott by surprise, and break the hold.  He didn’t have to take it.  He could break the hold at any time, if he wanted, but that would mean fighting himself free all over again, and it was easier to lie here and just … let it happen. 

The fingertip on his cheek was so soft that he almost had to lean into it to feel it.  He almost did.  But he was being held.  And no-one could see them.  He could just take it.  It wasn’t actually unpleasant. 

He closed his eyes.

Scott’s fingertip traced along the side of his nose, around his mouth, down his chin, up the other side of his mouth.  He tried not to move a muscle.  The fingertip traced around his eyes, down the side of his face again, along his jaw to his chin.  He tolerated the touch, allowing the fingertip to probe the planes of his face. 

And then, the touch went away, and a moment later it reappeared on his chest. 

He was naked to the waist, and he was lying back on Scott, naked back to naked chest with another man.  His eyes popped open of their own accord, and he felt his breath hitch inside him.  He raised one knee, ready to buck himself free in case he had to.  In case he decided to. 

The warning arm tightened across his throat again.  

He didn’t need to break the hold.  This wasn’t a threat, either to his health or to his masculinity.  He was being held down in a chokehold, and didn’t have a choice.  He didn’t have a say, so he needn’t protest.  He could just lie here and let it happen, and see where Scott was taking him. 

He felt Scott’s arm slide across his chest, felt that hand press itself over his heart.  He could feel the callouses on Scott’s palm, scraping slightly over his skin. 

He couldn’t see that hand moving across his body, with his head still trapped in Scott’s hold.  Scott’s arm under his chin was holding his head too far back to see down his own body.  But in his mind, he could see it – the tanned hand with its thick male fingers, stroking across his pale bare chest, brushing his bruises.  He stared helplessly at the roof of the store-room, as Scott’s fingertips chucked gently at his breastbone. 

“Why do you shave this?” Scott asked in his ear.  His voice was very soft, and very deep; just a rumble at the lowest limit of his voice before it broke into a whisper.  That intimate rasp was meant for Stonebridge’s ears alone. 

“For Kerry.”

“Oh.” 

Stonebridge swallowed, his Adam’s apple constricted by Scott’s arm. “I’ve stopped.”

“Don’t stop.  I like it.” 

 _Don’t stop_ … That was a command; gentle, intimate, but inflexible.  A command for his body, as if his body belonged to Scott. As if Scott thought he had a right to give orders regarding what Stonebridge did with his own body, telling him how _he_ wanted Stonebridge’s body groomed.  He shivered. 

The hand moved to his nipple.  He felt fingers on his nipple, gripping it lightly, and then giving it a sharp little twist. 

His body jerked in surprise. 

It was as if his nipple was attached directly to his penis.  He grew hard abruptly, as if his body had been waiting for a signal.  It was as if nipple and cock were connected by a wire, a bell-pull which Scott had just tugged.  His cargo pants were suddenly much too tight. 

He wasn’t simply tolerating Scott’s exploration any more.  He was enjoying it.  Touch had become caress.  Exploitation had become erotic.  He wanted more… he wanted to arch himself up into Scott’s teasing hand. 

He raised his knee higher.  He couldn’t see his body, he was still looking perforce at the ceiling, but he was sure he was tenting the front of his trousers.  He was ashamed, but he was on fire, and his breath was coming and going in little shudders.

He was flat on his back in a chokehold, in an empty storeroom in the middle of the night …  He was a highly trained professional soldier in a top-secret precision strike team – and he wanted nothing in the world more than he wanted Scott to _please don’t stop_ …

“Christ,” he muttered to himself. 

“D’ye like that?” 

“Yes,” he croaked, his voice dry. 

He could feel Scott breathing under him.  He could feel his heart thumping away in his chest.  He felt Scott’s hand slide across his chest, rubbing down his muscles.  He let his legs lie flat again, and laid his hands out at his sides.  His body was Scott’s, to do with as he pleased, and he didn’t want Scott to stop. 

He’d wanted to touch and cuddle _something_ ; he’d ached for the animal pleasure of touch,  and now _he_ was the one being cuddled, being held and stroked like an animal in Scott’s arms.  He was lying on Scott.  He was nominally on top, but he was being restrained, and for the first time in his life he knew the pleasure of submission. 

Scott’s hand roamed over his chest and belly.  He felt fingertips brush his flanks.  He felt one finger as it came across his navel, stopped as if surprised, and then begin to trace in lazy circles around and around and around it.  At first, the circles were delicious.  And then they weren’t enough, and he found himself surreptitiously trying to hitch the muscles of his stomach to encourage that one finger to explore further. 

And then, as if granting his wish, the fingertip dawdled up to his chest again, zigzagging this way and that, and tweaked his nipple.  He jerked. 

“Oh-ho-ho,” Scott chuckled.  “You _like_ that.” 

“Shit.  Yes.  More.” 

“Heh.” The hand traced his collarbone, his breastbone, ran under his ribcage, and then slowly down the centre of his belly to the front of his trousers.  The hand stopped for a moment, then seemed to disappear. 

Scott’s hand was on his belt, scraping over the fabric of his cargo-pants, and then it was pressing down lightly over his groin. 

He couldn’t help it, he was shivering with lust and panic.  His hips jerked up.  “Do it,” he said.  He picked up his own hand, and pressed it over Scott’s, over his groin,  feeling the warmth where their hands met.  “Do it,” he repeated. 

**_Bzzzoom!  Ba-da-ba bzzzooom!_ **

Scott jerked under him as if he’d been stung.  “What the fuck?” 

Stonebridge set his elbows on the cement and flicked himself up into a sitting position. 

“Holy shit,” he said, shocked out of his arousal. 

He wasn’t in a safe cosy bedroom.  He was lying on the floor in an abandoned textile factory, and _right over there_ was a few million quid’s worth of military surveillance equipment.  The buzzing kwaito music was coming from something in that lot. 

 ** _Ba-da-ba Bzzooom!_** The music went on. 

“It’s a cellphone,” he said.  He threw Scott’s hand off, got up, and trotted over to the desk designated Primary One.  The cement was cold under his bare feet, and it chilled away the last of the heat in his blood. 

 ** _“Nkalakatha!”_** a male singer interjected hoarsely, over the buzzing guitar chords. 

“Fuck me!” Scott complained, following him, “Is that _yours?_ ”

“That’s Moyo’s!”

Moyo’s phone, that Scott had taken from him, had been plugged into the Crib’s comm unit, where it could receive calls through the Crib’s uplink without giving away its location.  Stonebridge picked it up, and turned it over.  The screen was alight, and the metallic chords of the song tried their best to rumble through the tinny little speaker. 

**_Ba-da-ba bzzzooom! “Nkalakatha!”_ **

The screen said ‘number withheld.’  Not a problem for the Crib’s tracking software, although it would have been useful if the name had given them some sort of hint.  For example, something useful like ‘terrorist calling…’

“Answer it,” Scott said. 

“Why me?”

“You’ve spent more time in Africa, your accent’s better,” Scott charged him.  He picked up one of the headsets and held it to his ear, and then hovered his finger over the keyboard, ready to command the computer to pick up the call. 

**_“Nkalakatha!”_ **

“Fuck.”  Stonebridge held up the phone to his ear, and nodded at Scott.  “On three.” 

“Three…” Scott counted. “Two… One!” 

And then he pressed the keys on _One,_ instead of Zero, and Stonebridge found himself still mid-inhale with the music cut off and a live connection in his ear.

“Eh,” he grunted.  “Yes?”  He deepened his voice, trying to go for Moyo’s deep bass and flat vowels, and praying that he wouldn’t get a fast burst of Shona or Ndebele in return.  

But the voice that answered him was young, reedy and clearly European.  “Hell- _o…_?”  The word ended on a rising note; a question, not a greeting. 

“Ehhh,” Stonebridge temporised.  Moyo’s caller wanted the code phrase.  “A man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life,” he said, hoping he sounded like Moyo. 

“Truth of the modest sort I can promise you,” the young man on the other side said.  He sounded East European. 

Scott made a muffled grunt, sounding satisfied.  He grinned at Stonebridge, and Stonebridge frowned at him, hoping to warn him off distracting him. 

“You took the time picking up,” the voice said.  “You are all right?” 

“Eh-yes, it is late,” Stonebridge said. 

“Mr Toufeeq wants to know if you are ready to do more for the future of the new, free Zimbabwe?” 

“Yes,” Stonebridge said.

“Good.  We have the job for you to do.  Mr Toufeeq wants you to go to the Source One, pick up the load, and come to the Camp B.”  The man followed the _other_ Russian approach to applying definite articles in English: if you can’t remember where to put them, just use them _everywhere_. 

“Ehhhh,” Stonebridge said.  Did he dare play stupid on the phone?  “Camp B?” he repeated, fishing for more information.

“The Camp B.  Not the Camp A, the Camp B.”

“Camp B, yes.  What is the load?”

“Don’t worry about it.  The Source One has it all ready for you.  You just collect load, drive there, drive back, no problem.”

“Where are you?”

“You’re full of the questions!” the voice said, prickly suddenly.  “You ready for the job, or I call someone else?” 

“No,” Stonebridge said.  “I am ready.  I will leave now.” 

“Good.”  The other man cut the call without a farewell of any kind. 

Stonebridge lowered the phone and stared at it.  “Well, well, well.  Mr Toufeeq wants a delivery.” 

“I’ll bet he ain’t ordering a pizza.”  Scott picked up the Crib’s external line, and dialled Dalton’s number from memory.  “Yo,” he said.  “We’ve got a lead.”

 

* * *

 

   

Dalton strode in five minutes later, with Sinclair, Richmond and Baxter close on her heels.

Stonebridge had spent the last five minutes packing and checking his gear, trying not to stare at Scott. 

He didn’t dare pick up where he’d left off, just in case they were interrupted.  He didn’t dare make any more advances toward Scott, just in case he was rebuffed.  He didn’t want to even _begin_ talking about; they couldn’t cram a meaningful discussion into the hasty moments before the rest of the team arrived, and he didn’t care to try.

For his part, Scott busied himself with his bags and his weapons without saying a word.   They had spent five minutes in a thickly-concentrated silence.

“What have we got?” Dalton asked. 

“William Moyo just got a phone call,” Scott said. 

“William Moyo?” Sinclair asked, advancing to Primary One and staring down at the cellphone, still plugged into the board. 

“I answered, and gave the recognition code, and I was accepted as Moyo,” Stonebridge said.  “The reply code is, ‘Truth of a modest sort I can promise you.”

“Young guy, sounded Russian or Baltic,” Scott said.  “Didn’t give his name.  Bought Mikey hook, line and sinker.”

“Tracing the call,” Richmond said, pulling out her chair and sitting down at Primary One.  A flick of her fingers on the mouse brought the log-in screen up. 

“Our caller had a message for Moyo from Toufeeq,” Stonebridge said.  “There’s a load of some sort, waiting at a location called Source One, which he wants to have driven to Camp B.”

“Camp B…”

“He specified Camp B, not Camp A.  Presumably there are at least two camps.”

“We could have guessed that anyway,” Dalton said.  “Toufeeq’s camp, and Matlock’s camp…”

“At least two,” Scott said. 

“Designate Location Charlie for the caller’s location,” Dalton decided. 

“And Source One?”  Baxter asked. 

“We’ve no way of guessing where in Cape Town that is,” Sinclair said.  “There are a million places where a truck could be loaded.”

“We can make a stab at guessing,” Baxter said. 

“Not before they’re warned off.  They’ll be expecting a driver to arrive,” Stonebridge said.  “When Moyo doesn’t show up, it’ll put the wind up.”

“They’ll be expecting a driver to arrive … maybe we can infiltrate one of us in there…” Baxter cast an eye sideways at Sinclair, the only one of the team with more than a snowball’s chance of passing as a Zimbabwean truck driver

“Work on triangulating Moyo’s movements with warehouses and storage lockers,” Dalton ordered. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Baxter said.  

“Mystery Guest Number One said _there_ when he mentioned Camp B,” Scott said.  “Not _here._   Where-ever Camp B is, Mystery Guest was calling from somewhere _else._ ”

“Could be a hold-over from speaking in a second language,” Stonebridge said. 

“Could be,” Scott said.  “Still a lead, though.  Whereever Mystery Guest is, Toufeeq is real close.”

“Which is somewhere in or around the town of Upington, in the Northern Cape,” Richmond said, swivelling her chair around, “according to his phone.” 

“Where the fuck’s Upington?” Scott demanded.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Dalton said, “because you two are going there.  Take the Landcruiser, and all your gear.  We’ll send you Mystery Guest’s location data on route.”

“Yes, ma’am.  You coming, Scott?”   Stonebridge reached out for his Bergen, already packed, and swung it over one shoulder.  His other hand reached out for the duffel bag with their weapons in it. 

“Right behind you, buddy.” 

Stonebridge led the way to their garage where the cars were parked, hugely aware of Scott close on his heels. 

The garage was separated from the rest of the Crib by a short corridor and two doors.  There was a camera mounted in the corridor.  It had been set to look down on the distance between the two doors, but it had a blind spot, in the shadowy corner behind the door, where no intruder moving between Crib and garage would pass.     

He walked through the door, and cast a quick check above his head to make sure that the camera was still in the same place, its pick-up area unchanged.  Yes. The blind spot was just to his left.

No sooner than he heard the door close, than he shrugged both of his bags off his shoulders.  The bags hit the floor, and he jerked around.  He closed with Scott before he could take more than a step.  His hands clamped on Scott’s shirt front, and heaved him sideways in the direction of the camera. 

They were cloaked in technological invisibility, hidden from the camera by the camera’s own mounting.   What they did now was private. 

A quick thrust of Stonebridge’s arms had Scott slammed up against the corridor wall.

Scott grunted as his back thumped into the bricks, his Bergen hitting the floor with a thud.  Stonebridge leaned close, both fists bunched in Scott’s shirt under his chin, his forearm against his chest pressing him up against the wall. 

“You,” Stonebridge rasped.  He raised his head to glare down his nose at Scott. 

For a moment Scott’s eyes were wide, and then they narrowed again in amusement.  “Easy, tiger,” he drawled, unfazed. 

“You…” Stonebridge hissed through his teeth.  “You don’t tell anyone.  Not a single fucking soul!  You understand?”

“Yeah, I read you, buddy.”  Scott’s dark head lolled against the wall, amused by his solemnity. 

“Good,” Stonebridge said. 

Was he really going to do it?  Yes, he was.  He glared at Scott a moment longer, readying himself.  He glared just long enough for Scott’s gaze to grow quizzical.   He was going to do this, he realized.  He was going to do it right now.  He was really going to do it…

He did it.  Closed his eyes and went in for what he wanted with a sudden hard lunge.

His lips collided with Scott’s with rather more force than he intended.   He felt Scott grunt in surprise, and then suddenly his mouth was full of eager American.  He felt Scott align his head so that noses were out of the way, felt his lips open, and suddenly Scott was driving back against his kiss, hard. 

It wasn’t like any kiss he’d ever had in his life.  Scott’s kiss tasted … macho.  He tasted of cigarettes, and beer, and coffee, a strong musky maleness.  His lips were rough with stubble, his kiss stinging in a way that no woman’s kiss ever would. His mouth was aggressive, demanding, pushing, offering himself and claiming Stonebridge in return.  Stonebridge closed his eyes, and gave himself over to the sensations in his mouth. 

Stonebridge felt Scott grunt again, and a hard hand clamped on the back of his neck, trapping him in the kiss … and then quite suddenly it was all too much.

He pulled away, and opened his eyes.  He couldn’t let go of the upper hand.  He _had_ to be in control, and the sudden terror that he might not be made him draw away.  He’d never kissed a man before.  It had always been threatening, even the idea of it too dangerous to consider, and now that he was doing it…

But he still had Scott thrust up against the wall, his prisoner.  His fists were still knotted in Scott’s shirt.  _He_ made the rules here. _He_ commanded here, _not_ Scott. 

Scott seemed to realize what he was thinking, or perhaps he saw the mixture of panic and lust in Stonebridge’s eyes.  He set his dark head back against the wall, in languid  surrender.  “Want some more?” he drawled, his voice just a rasp.  His crow’s-feet deepened in a grin full of promise and challenge. 

“Yes,” Stonebridge said, and it was true. 

“Go on.”

He leaned in again. 

This time they came together with more consideration.  He opened his mouth and felt for Scott’s, and their lips came together again.  Scott’s stubble rasped his skin, burning.  He felt a touch that was not lip, and recognized it for Scott’s tongue.  Scott’s tongue, exploring his lips!  The daring of it roused him to retaliate, and he put out his own tongue and wrestled past it.  A shift of his head, a deeper dive, and he was inside Scott’s mouth, exploring.  He swept Scott’s teeth with the tip of his tongue,  and that caress right there was Scott’s own tongue, challenging his with sharp little flicks. 

And then Scott bit him, a sharp nip to his lower lip.  He jerked with shock. 

There was nothing even remotely effeminate about the way Damien Scott kissed, and the realization gave him fresh energy.  This was great stuff!  He leaned into the kiss,  challenging Scott with his mouth, overwhelming his defences, and the delightful sensations in his mouth grew to an electrifying fever.  He realized that his breath was roaring in his ears, and that he was shaking, and that he was so aroused he could burst  … and that he was pressing Scott against a wall as if he wanted to crush him. 

He pulled away again for another visual check. 

But Scott didn’t seem hurt, or alarmed. 

“Hey, there,” Scott whispered.  His breath was hot on Stonebridge’s face, and he was gasping.  His face was flushed, and his eyes were wide with a dark curiosity, as if he’d never beheld anything quite like Stonebridge before.  His hands moved, coming up to frame Stonebridge’s face, steadying him as if for inspection. 

“Hey there,” Stonebridge replied. 

Stonebridge could feel every breath in him, crushed against the wall as he was.  That couldn’t be comfortable.  Stonebridge’s hands were still gripping Scott’s shirt, surely almost a stranglehold by now.  He let go, and lowered his hands to his sides. 

“Sorry,” he said.  Kate had complained that he was rough, and here he was trying his utmost to suffocate Scott as well.  “Didn’t mean to hurt you.”

But Scott did not let him go in return.  He stared back, hungrily, and Stonebridge felt fingers explore his face. 

“That was good,” Scott said.  His eyes were distant with arousal, and his gaze seemed fixed on Stonebridge’s mouth. 

“Mission,” Stonebridge said.  He stepped back, drawing himself back and away from Scott’s hands on his face.

“Mission?”  Something in Scott seemed to switch on again, as if he was shaking his arousal off.  He shook his head and pushed himself away from the wall.  “Yeah.  Mission first.  Upington.” 

“After … more of this. Yeah?”

“Count on it, buddy.” 

Stonebridge reached into his pocket for the Landcruiser’s key.   “When we get there,” he promised. 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The boys have a long over-night drive ahead of them. They'll get there, but writing is being interrupted by real life, and their road trip is a good place to pause.


End file.
